Last update - 00:00 26/10/2006
Eating Well 25 / To bake or not to bake
By Rachel Talshir
Lately, thanks to eco chic, the lives of health-food advocates have changed drastically - from unhappy to hedonistic. We, who have become accustomed to eating cakes with the consistency of cement and the taste of mortar, feel like dreamers these days as we confront a choice of healthful cakes with the look, taste and texture of cakes in every sense of the word.
Every week more challenge-seekers join the circle of bakers who do wonders with heavy, grayish whole-wheat flour, and succeed in breathing life into them. All we health advocates (who have become accustomed to living in a world without seductive temptations) have to do is enjoy every bite.
Ginger-flavored oatmeal cookies by Orna Saar illustrate this miracle, in which unglamorous ingredients morph into soft and airy creations. Before Saar began to translate her knowledge of baking into healthful cakes and cookies, I used to leave my nutrition principles at home every time we visited her: There are a few things, among them the products of her oven, for which it is possible and worthwhile to betray any strict eating regime.
I tasted her heady-smelling oatmeal cookies for the first time a year and a half ago at her son's birthday party. I polished off a respectable quantity, and it didn't even occur to me that such fine baked goods were made from healthful ingredients. Only after I had made a dent in the inventory did I discover that these cookies excel in positive qualities. To celebrate the miracle, I ate quite a few more.
For the uninitiated, Saar is not an advocate of any health regime, and her recipes - which have been "converted" for those who seek to eat right - prove her love for the members of her family who have become captives of strict eating regimes.
1/2 kilo ground oats
1 1/3 cup golden demara sugar
2 tsp. ground ginger
1 tsp. ground cardamom
1/4 tsp. grated nutmeg
2 tbsp. grape juice
1 cup canola oil
1 joint of fresh ginger root
3 eggs
Combine the dry ingredients (except the ginger) and then mix in the wet ingredients (except the eggs), to form a dough. Chill in the refrigerator for 12 hours.
Preheat the oven to 160 degrees Centigrade. Grate the fresh ginger into the dough, whisk the eggs and add them; mix well.
Place baking paper on three large baking tins. With wet hands make small balls of dough and place them in five rows and three columns. Flatten them slightly with wet fingers (the dough does not spread during baking). Place the pans in the oven.
After less than 10 minutes - when the edges become browned, and the cookies are still soft and dry to the touch - remove the pans from the oven and allow the cookies to cool in the pan.
Store the cookies in closed jars. If there are no little children among the eaters, you can add 1/2 cup of chopped pecans to the dough; also the grape juice can be replaced by any kind of liqueur. Makes 45-50 cookies.
Some health-food fans reject baking itself and claim that the long exposure to a high temperature destroys the nutritional value of food. Thus purists rank baking slightly above frying and way below steaming. These people, including me, are incapable of enjoying life without getting on other people's nerves a bit. But the time has come to admit, after 24 columns, that even we, the health-food advocates, cannot live without cookies. With all due respect to health, what is a home without the aroma of a cake coming out of the oven? And what is a Friday afternoon without a piping-hot baking pan whose contents can, and should, be sampled once every 15 minutes?
A healthful version of apple cake, the invention of an anonymous health fan, proves that even bakers who are mediocre are capable of creating a cake that is at least reasonably good, if not better than that.
Before the eco chic became fashionable, I came across this recipe in its regular version, which included self-rising white flour and white sugar. Converting it into a healthful item is a controversial exercise: Children claim that it does the cake an injustice. People like me are convinced that it does us a kindness.
6 Granny Smith apples
1/2 cup canola oil
1/2 cup milk
1 cup brown sugar
3 cups buckwheat flour
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
3 eggs
Preheat the oven to 150 degrees Centigrade. Grease a large Pyrex baking dish. Peel and core the apples and slice thinly. Spread the apple slices on the bottom of the baking dish. Scatter the cinnamon over them.
Mix the rest of the ingredients in a food processor. The resulting dough should be soft but not runny, because the apples emit liquids during baking. If the dough is too hard, add milk; if the dough is too watery, add flour. Spread the dough over the apples and bake for 1 hour.
Any questions?
The strictest purists usually say that there is no healthful cake and that at best these sorts of desserts deserve to be described as merely "preferable" - less bad than ordinary cakes.
What are the advantages of whole-wheat flour over sifted flour? How is the wheat kernel constructed and which layers are lost during the process of sifting? Why has sifted flour replaced whole-wheat flour? What are the essential nutrients in the latter kind of flour? What health risks are involved in the consumption of sifted flour? Is whole-wheat flour a new fashion or does it mark a return to "the sources"?
Answer to all these questions and many more can be found in a comprehensive article ?(in Hebrew?) by Prof. Ben-Ami Sela, entitled "On the advantages of whole-grain bread or whole wheat." See: www.tevalife.com/article.asp?id=2403