TWD: Chocolate Chunk Granola Rum Grabbers

Everything's better with chocolate right? That has been my motto of late...seems like anything that has that beloved dark cocoa color or flavor to it somehow seems like I just want to shove it in my mouth and chew happily away.



I have always been a chocolate lover...probably thanks to my Mom who has one of the world's largest sweet tooths. Rumor has it that she consumed a hot fudge sundae almost daily while pregnant with me...ahhh the old days!

Anyway, so when I set out to make this week's TWD...the Granola Grabbers, as chosen by Michelle of Bad Girl Baking, I didn't even really know what they were. I thought, granola and grabbers. Healthy cookies? Well kinda. When I found the recipe in the book, I thought oh those look yummy and of course I could switch them up. I thought I wanted to add something extra sweet but wasn't sure what...until my eye lit on this container of Ghiradelli Dark Decadence individual chocolate squares that one of our friends gave us for Xmas last year.



I pulled out 3 60% chocolate squares, cut them into pieces (thanks to reading Dorie's note in the book today about adding chopped chocolate in recipes rather than regular ole processed chocolate chips!), and added them to my grabbers. I also added Tahitian Vanilla extract in honor of the Tahitian Vanilla Granola I picked up at the store today.

I marinated the raisins in hot rum for 15 minutes as well, subbed white wheat flour, diced pecans instead of almonds and peanuts, cut the butter by 1/3, omitted the wheat germ, used dark brown sugar, and put in about 1 tablespoon of whole milk. From start to finish, the cookies were in the oven in 30 min, I loved the speed of this recipe.



While I am talking about modifications, what the heck is up with all the butter in this recipe? For the whole recipe you are talking 14 tablespoons of butter which is almost 2 full sticks. For 1c of flour? That is crazy insane butterage!

I cut mine by about 1/3...so for 1/2 the recipe I only used about 5 tbls and it was more than fine. When I make cookies other than butter cookies, like an oatmeal or chocolate chip...I use way less butter than this recipe calls for. Isn't the idea for these to be SOMEWHAT healthy? Dorie says in this book she expected her kids to take them to school. Wheat germ, nuts, granola...and a trough of butter?! Whaaaa?



Anyway, just somewhat of a rant, but these days SO many recipes seem to call for way more sugar and butter than is necessary in my opinion, I typically cut butter and sugar by at least 1/3 in almost any recipe, and do not have issues with lack of sweetness or flavor. Most recipes don't even consider if you add something like 'sweetened' coconut or honey, or other things that have sugar in them already. 99% of what I eat is too sweet for my taste...in almost all my cupcake recipes I cut sugar because hello, how much do you put in frosting??? That is overkill.



Anyway, back to the grabbers! I didn't press these down and they domed up into little pebbly mountains of amazing cookie goodness. Taste on these things was ... OMGYUM!!! The dark chocolate gives them a tiny bit of a sour chocolate kick which is a great contrast to the sweetness of the rum, coconut and raisins in the cookie. Bonus is that while they are not exactly HEALTH food, because of the white wheat flour and the granola, they actually pack a decent fiber punch. Gotta get your fiber in! 35g a day, baby. Which means I can 'grab' these tomorrow for snacks all day long and not feel guilty right?! HA! I've already been grabbing them for 'dessert' tonite as well.

Find the recipe at Michelle's blog, though seriously, if you don't already have Dorie's book and you like to bake, you should definitely get it. Amazon has ridiculous deals, I have seen it a few times for something like $12! And it's something like 400 pages..98% of RECIPES. Amazing ones.



Be sure to check out the other TWD community's grabbalicious cookies. Enjoy!