Applesauce Brownies

1/2c. shortening
2 squares (1 oz. each) unsweetened chocolate
1c. sugar
2 eggs, well beaten
1/2c. applesauce
1t. vanilla
1c. flour
1/2t. baking powder
1/4t. baking soda
1/4t. salt
1/2c. chopped nuts (optional)

Melt shortening and chocolate in saucepan with low to medium heat.  Remove from heat and add sugar and beaten eggs.  Blend well.  Stir in applesauce.  Stir in vanilla, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.  Add the flour and mix well.  Stir in nuts.  Pour into greased and lightly floured 9-inch pan.  Bake at 325℉ for 30-35 min. or until toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean.  Cool and frost if desired.

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Safe and Edible Cookie Dough

Eating raw cookie dough has gotten a bad rap from the Centers of Disease Control (CDC) for various valid reasons.  If you're one of the millions of raw cookie dough lovers, you've had difficult decisions to make.  After all, eating the raw cookie dough is part of the fun of making cookies.  Your choices included buying already made cookie dough so you could eat it (store bought cookie dough is safe to eat), making the cookie dough and baking all the cookies without even tasting the dough, buying already baked cookies, or giving up on cookies all together.

Raw cookie dough lovers can now rejoice!!!  There are options out there where you can make your favorite cookie recipe and eat the raw dough without the fear of getting sick.  Here are the reasons raw cookie dough has been considered "hazardous waste" and the steps you can take to remove those hazards:

FLOUR

To understand where the hazards from flour come from, you must understand that flour comes from wheat that's grown in fields that are fertilized to help the wheat grow.  The hazards come from how the fields are fertilized.  Without going into extreme detail on a food blog, good fertilizer comes from the droppings of animals.  These droppings, by nature, are contaminated with bacteria.  The pathogenic bacteria the CDC has determined to be the main culprit of its concerns is E. coli (a very nasty bug that in some cases can cause death).  E. coli can be killed by heat.  So, what to do about the flour???

1.  You can buy heat treated flour online; but, it might be too expensive.

2.  You can heat the flour yourself before using it in your cookie dough: 
Microwave method:  If you have a candy thermometer, place flour in a microwave-safe bowl and heat it.  You'll need to stir it every 15 sec. to make sure it gets heated all the way through.  It must reach 160℉.
Oven method:  Spread the flour out on a cookie sheet.  For 2c. of flour, it takes about 5 min. at 350℉.  

**Remember, flour is a thickening agent and most people use more than what the recipe calls for.  Be sure to heat enough flour to the required temperature. Be sure to let the flour cool before adding it to your recipe.  

There is a chance that heating will destroy some of the gluten.  So, if you want to bake the cookie dough later, you may want to do a single test cookie to see how well it bakes.  It may not be noticeable in cookies or brownies; but, that's for you to experiment and find out.  If you heat the flour for cake dough (mainly because you want to lick the bowl after pouring the cake dough into the pan), you'll want to do a test cake ahead of time to see how well the cake cooks.  Doing it ahead of time will give you time to make another cake if the cake doesn't cook well with the heated flour.

EGGS

Eggs have a different issue.  They could be contaminated with salmonella (another nasty bug you don't want).  Heat also kills salmonella.  There's no way to tell which eggs are contaminated; and, there's no way to pasteurize eggs in their shell.  Pasteurization is a process where heat is applied to a product to kill harmful organisms.  So, what do you do about eggs?

1.  You can buy pasteurized egg product at any grocery store.  These days, the product is usually pasteurized egg whites.  If you know where to look, you can find pasteurized egg product with the whole egg being pasteurized.  You'll have to look on the carton to find out how much egg product to use that will equal one egg.  They usually come in pint-sized cardboard cartons (like some milk cartons) where you open it at the top and pour out the product. 

One quick note:  If you're using pasteurized egg whites to fluff in a recipe (such as meringue), you'll need to add some cream of tartar or lemon juice or white vinegar to the pasteurized egg whites in order for them to fluff for the recipe.  For 1 egg white, use 1/4t. cream of tartar, 1/4-1/2t. lemon juice, or 1/4-1/2t. white vinegar--cream of tartar works best.

2.  If you know you won't be cooking the dough at all, you can probably leave out the eggs.  Eggs are used in baked products to help structure the dough while it is cooking.  They don't really contribute anything to the way the dough tastes.  Eggs, however, do contribute to the moistness of the dough.  So, instead of using eggs, try using an egg substitute.  If you google egg substitutes, you’ll find many websites with lots of suggestions of what to use instead of eggs.  Find the egg substitute that works best for you.


LEAVENING AGENTS

With the exception of yeast (which by definition can cause yeast infections, but is killed by the acid in your stomach), leavening agents do NOT cause you to get sick.  The main problem with leavening agents, especially if in large doses, is the gas they produce.  Even while in your stomach, before the stomach acid destroys it, those agents can be producing carbon dioxide gas.  Some people can absorb the gas in their bodies without any kind of problems.  If you're one of the millions of people with some sort of digestive issue, leavening agents in raw cookie dough can cause varying amounts of distress as the gas acts as an intestinal irritant.  So, how should you deal with leavening agents?

When talking about the amount of leavening agents in raw cookie dough, most people can handle those leavening agents without intestinal issues.  For those who can't (and that will take some experimentation on your part to find out if your GI tract can handle it or not), there is another option.  This option only works if you do NOT plan to cook the dough EVER--you can leave out the leavening agents.  They're only  needed during the cooking process and do not contribute to the taste of the dough.  So, if you know you won't be cooking the dough, just leave out the leavening agents.

So, until the CDC finds another issue with raw cookie dough, you can now grab your favorite cookie recipe, make it healthier, and ENJOY  YOUR  COOKIE  DOUGH  AGAIN!!!

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