Low sugar chocolate chip cookie

Since both my mom, and Chris’ mom are diabetic, we’ve been trying some low and sugar free recipes. We’ve made a few recipes with varying levels of success, but I’ve found we have better results using the splenda for baking blends at half amounts. With this in mind, we pulled out one of our favorite chocolate chip cookie recipes, Alton Brown’s Chewy cookie recipe as a base.

Ingredients
2 sticks salted butter
2 1/4 cups bread flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 tbsp splenda sugar blend for baking
1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp splenda brown sugar blend for baking
1 egg
1 egg yolk
2 tablespoons milk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract (more or less-we always use more)
2 cups bittersweet chocolate chips (the higher cocoa, the better)

Method:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Melt butter, and once it’s cooled some, add the sugar blends and mix until smooth (it may take a while). Add the beaten egg and yolk to the mixture and stir in, along with the vanilla. In a separate bowl, mix the dry ingredients, then add to the wet. Mix until mostly incorporated. Add the chocolate chips, and mix in. Portion onto parchment lined cookie sheets, and bake for 12-14 minutes, until golden on the edges.

One thing to mention is that cookies baked with splenda don’t spread as well as full sugar cookies, so you’ll want to smush the cookie down a little so you get a cookie shaped cookie, rather than a bombe shaped cookie.

They turned out well, a little more crumby than a typical cookie, but in the future, I may try AP or cake flour instead, just for giggles.

St. Louis style Pizza

If you’ve ever had a St. Louis style pizza, you know they’re different. Generally, people either love it, or hate it, without much middle ground. I’ve only had St. Louis style pizza at Imo’s, a St. Louis chain that has a location in the KC area.

What is St. Louis style pizza? Basically, its a thin crust pizza, very crunchy, that utilizes a pasteurized-process cheese known as Provel. Yes. Process cheese. I know. Ick. Well, actually, Provel is pretty good for processed cheese, a darn sight better than the typical American cheese slices.

Provel is essentially a mixture of Swiss, Provolone, and white Cheddar, with a slight smoke flavoring.

St. Louis style pizza sauce is generally pretty sweet, but in this case I used sauce I had in the freezer. It was made with a 28 oz can of tomato puree, a couple tbsp of double strength tomato paste, 1 onion minced, and Penzey’s pizza seasoning – and possibly a couple pinches of sugar. If you don’t have a pizza sauce seasoning blend, basically you’ll want to start with a pinch of salt, 1/2tbsp dried crushed oregano, a pinch of time, and and pinch of basil.

The interesting thing about St. Louis pizza is that the pizza crust is unleavened, which means there’s no yeast, no rising time, no waiting.

Dough:
2 cups + 2tbsp AP flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp oil (olive, canola)
2 tsp corn syrup (I used dark)
1/2 cup + 2tbsp water.

Mix ingredients until a stiff dough is formed. I found I needed more water, but not much.

Roll it out on a floured board, as thin as you can without breaking it.

Put it on a pizza stone or pan. I think ours is 18″ or so.

Preheat oven to 450.

Top the dough with around 1/4 cup sauce, and about 2 cups of Provel (I think I used around 1 cup of Provel, and 1 cup of mozzarella, since Katie isn’t a big fan of the Provel). Other toppings included fresh basil, oregano and thyme, as well as about 15 or 20 slices of turkey pepperoni.

Bake at 450 for about 10-13 minutes, so that the crust browns on the bottom.

Oh, and unless you want to be a St. Louis pizza pretender, cut it into squares, not those wedge shapes everyone else uses.

Our St. Louis style pizza