Healthy chocolate cookies + 5 facts about Americans.

I’ve NEVER been praised as exuberantly for my cooking skills as yesterday.
And I did not even serve anything spectacular: we had quinoa salad, grilled salmon and oven-baked pumpkin with feta cheese.
This morning I prepared a slice of wholegrain bread with cream cheese, chopped arugula and radishes, my child by my side sighing (!) with happiness - the longtime reader will have guessed it by now :
Noelle is back.

You, too, are looking for a grateful child?
Just send her abroad – a good place would be America. 
Yet, just as Berlin does not stand for Germany, New York does not stand for America: how about Missouri?
Preferably a small town far away from any big cities? 

Even if I am fully aware that you will run into the strawberry cheese faction just as often anywhere in the world (yesss, even in Recklinghausen!): 
Noelle really struggled with the eating behavior overseas. 

Other differences according to Noelle:


1. Everything is BIG. .
Refrigerators, cars, drinks, roads, McDonald’s menus, people (directly related to the big menus), the selection of breakfast cereals, shopping malls, roads, everything.



2. Americans love it COLD.
ACs everywhere: at school, inside homes, in malls, in museums. The refrigerators, too, are set to a much colder setting than here – everything inside is close to freezing.
Drinks are enjoyed at an extremely cold temperature.
If you order an apple (e.g. instead of fries with your meal), it is served so cold that you can hardly take a bite.



3. They like their food SWEET AND GREASY AND COLORFUL.
It seemed to Noelle that there were only three flavors: 
1. Extremely sweet.  
2. Extremely greasy.
3. Both at the same time.

Furthermore everyone loves colorful food – the more intense and unnatural the colors, the better! Even Haribo gummi bears come in more intense colors than ours, and they taste noticeably sweeter.
There is White Chocolate Bacon and Barbecue soda – all the while, at the end of the day, everything tastes nearly the same.
Which is: sweet.

(The "clean eating/healthy food" movement seems to be more of a thing in the big cities). 

4. Students display fantastic SCHOOL SPIRIT.
Everyone is fully supportive of their school, proudly wearing their school shirts/jackets, attending football games and other school events in great numbers.
Classes like dancing, cheerleading, marching band, jazz band, football, cooking, theater, health are regular parts of the curriculum.



5. They love to DRESS UP.
They all love dances and festive events, which happen regularly – accordingly they get dressed to the nines for these occasions (while the everyday school outfit is quite often careless and almost sloppy, and hardly anyone wears anything but sweat pants).

For a dance, though, they rev up:
the girls (and their mothers) visit the hair salon for artful curls, get their make-up and nails done, and buy a new dress for every prom and homecoming. 
By the way, the moms are just as glamorous, taking endless pictures of their children and bursting with pride – how pretty they look/that they have a date/that they were voted queen of the dance.
For to become homecoming queen or king is a very big deal.

Noelle brought back one big proclivity: she loves American cookies even more than ever before!
But they still have to be gooey inside. I have tried my hand at a slightly healthier version:  
these chocolate cookies are prepared with raw chocolate, are chockfull of good things – and simply taste absolutely delicious.

Healthy Chocolate Chip Cookies


Wet ingredients:

1 Tbsp ground flaxseed (soaked in 3 Tbsp water)
1 egg
¼ cup melted coconut oil 
4 Tbsp butter
1/3 cup cane sugar
a pinch of vanilla pulp or a bit of ground vanilla 

Dry ingredients:

1/2 tsp baking powder
a pinch of sea salt
3 Tbsp raw cocoa powder(e.g. via Amazon)
heaped 1/3 cup oat flour (just chop rolled oats in the blender)
heaped ¾ cup wheat flour (can also be mixed with wholegrain flour)
3 Tbsp milk
5 oz chopped bitter-sweet chocolate (raw chocolate)
3-4 Tbsp dried cranberries or raisins 

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Mix wet ingredients in a big bowl (flaxseed, egg, coconut oil, butter, cane sugar, vanilla pulp).
2. Now add the dry ingredients step by step. If the dough gets too dry, just add a little milk. The dough’s consistency is ideal, if you can shape small balls with it (reasonably well).
3. Now roll small balls (approx. the size of golf balls) and place them on a cookie sheet covered with parchment paper. Then slightly press down on the dough balls, to a thickness of about ¼ “ to ½”.  
4. Bake for approx. 9 minutes, so that they are still nice and soft on the inside – depending on size and thickness this can take a bit longer or shorter. 

You can order the big Ball mason jar at Blueboxtree, it is perfectly suitable for a larger amount of cookies.
Cake stand by Räder.



Love,
Joanna

p.s. Stay tuned for the next episode: “5 facts about the inhabitants of Southern Mongolia”.
Written by Ben. 


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This post was translated by Ginnell Studio.