Making Cookies that are a little Too Crunchy - What You Can Learn From My Mistakes

  I am always working with recipes, incorporating new ideas, substituting ingredients, etc. I'm always learning new recipes too. I have an old recipe I was going to use tonight, but I was going to change the grains from bran cereal to fresh ground wheat flour (using hard wheat berries) and freshly ground oatmeal.
   I put the two grains in the Vitamix together (big mistake!) and ground, and ground some more, and continued to grind. I added the baking soda and salt and ground some more. Then I dumped this mixture into the whipped butter in the mixing bowl. Another big mistake! I didn't see the wheat berries that didn't get ground until then.
   I took different sized strainers and tried to sift the berries from the ground oatmeal. I finally salvaged many berries and put them back into the blender container. Then I ground them until they were finally ground. Unfortunately, there were many unground wheat berries still left that didn't make it back to the container.
   So I finished making the dough, but realized that the dough was very crunchy. In fact, I had to spit the berries out. How many more things could have gone wrong this day?
   My grandson got a bad bloody nose this morning, to which I still have to get a cleaner out to clean the stains up. Another grandson went pee on the carpeting, not too far from the blood stains. Then I couldn't find my toothpaste. It was no where to be found. But I did actually find it later on. I have so much to be thankful for even on days like this.

Chocolate Chip Cookies With Bran (or whatever ground grain you want to use)

1 cup bran cereal (I always ground this)
1 cup unbleached flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 stick butter, softened
2/3 cup organic sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
1 cup chocolate chips (the best are the ones with the highest cacao percentage)

    I used 1 cup oatmeal and 1 cup ground wheat berries. If you do this, be sure to grind them separately. Combine the bran cereal and flour, or whatever flours you are using. Add the baking soda and salt. Whip the butter until smooth and add sugar, vanilla, and egg to the butter. Blend all together and add the flour mixture. Then add the chocolate chips. I also added a tablespoon of coconut oil and also one of lard. Bake at 375 for about 10 - 12 minutes depending upon how hot your oven is. This recipe is taken from the box of All-Bran cereal, I believe.