Acorn flour chocolate chip cookies recipe
When environmental education coordinator Bryanna Kuhlman decided to focus on ethnobotany for this year's Thanksgiving hike, she knew she would talk about how people have used acorns for food as part of the Kenue Park program.
She came to me (community relations coordinator Kiley Roth) and casually mentioned it would be fun to make cookies from acorn flour for people to try.
"That's awesome!"
Since it's a little late in the season to try to find usable acorns to make our own flour, we endeavored to find some to purchase and then found a simple way to make cookies.
(You can find directions on how to make acorn flour on the Modern Homestead blog here.)
A few different recipes for acorn flour cookies exist, like this Acorn Maple Shortbread cookie, but everyone loves a chocolate chip cookie, so that's the recipe I decided to follow.
It looks like a variety of cookie recipes will work with acorn flour, just substitute only half of the regular flour for acorn flour and use the rest of the recipe as usual.
I found that my cookies turned out a little more fragile than usual with this flour, so make sure that your baking sheet is very non-stick or is greased well.
Also, let them rest on the baking sheet for at least five minutes to firm up before using a spatula to slide them off onto the cooling rack. Otherwise, you'll end up with several broken cookies like me!
The chocolate chip cookie recipe I used is my typical go-to, from the "Miss Kay's Duck Commander Kitchen" cookbook by Kay Robertson with half of the flour replaced with acorn flour.
Acorn Flour Chocolate Chip Cookies
1 stick of butter, unsalted, softened
3/4 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 cup and 2 Tbsp. acorn flour
1 cup and 2 Tbsp. all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups chocolate chips
1. Cream butter. Add sugars and beat until fluffy. Add egg and mix.
2. Mix in baking soda and flours until batter comes together. It will be dark because of the acorn flour.
3. Mix in chocolate chips by hand instead of with beaters, because batter is thick.
4. Drop in teaspoons onto a non-stick or greased baking sheet. Bake at 375 degrees for eight minutes.
5. Take out of oven, and let rest on the baking sheet for five minutes before using a spatula to place the cookies on a cooling rack.
You can taste test one of these cookies during our Thanksgiving hike 3 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 22, or try making them yourself!
(Find a recipe for wild game jambalaya here. Apparently, I really like Miss Kay's recipes.)
