Bonjour les amis!
While Cape Vincent is being slammed with another snowstorm, we are bundled up and dreaming of sunny days ahead! ❄️
It has been some time since our last post, but you can be sure that we have been trés busy behind the scenes at Chateau. While Susan and Kate renovated their shared studio, Dean has been constructing a primary bed and bathroom in the upstairs apartment. We knew when we purchased the historic building on the corner of Broadway and Esselstyne that it needed extensive work, and as it has been almost entirely a DIY renovation, we are excited (and exhausted! 😂) as we near the finish line.
We are also looking forward to giving the shop a refresh in the coming weeks— a good spring cleaning and a fresh coat of paint helps energize us as shopkeepers and keeps the store looking great! And we are so excited to share some of the new collections we’ll be featuring from White’s Pottery, Queen Bee Jewelry, Hedge Witch Botanicals, and others.
We’ve also been enjoying the quiet that the winter months can bring, and our downtime as well, reading (Susan: Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson; Kate: Thirty-Two Words for Field: Lost Words of the Irish Landscape by Manchán Magan; Dean: The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald) and testing new cookie recipes. Pictured above is a batch of— dare we say it?— healthy chocolate chip cookies, based on a recipe from SmittenKitchen, on a White’s Pottery cake stand in our signature Chateau glaze. 🍪 Check out the recipe and our modifications below. We recommend pairing them with a cup of our Assam tea, a good book, and a cozy blanket until this snowstorm abates!
Quick & Healthy Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies
Ingredients
4 tablespoons (50 grams) raw or turbinado sugar
1/2 cup dark (95 grams) light or dark brown sugar
1/2 cup (115 grams) unsalted butter, at room temperature for a hand-mixer; cold is fine for a stand-mixer
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 large egg
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 cup (95 grams) whole wheat flour
1/4 cup (25 grams) wheat germ, wheat bran, oat bran, or a finely chopped nut of your choice
1 1/2 cups (120 grams) old-fashioned rolled oats
1 cup (6 ounces) chocolate chips, or semisweet chocolate, chopped into chunks
Flaky sea salt, if you wish
Heat oven to 350 degrees F and line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
In a large bowl, beat sugars, butter (if cold, in chunks), and salt together until fluffy. Add egg and vanilla, and beat until mixed. Sprinkle baking powder and baking soda over batter and beat until very well-combined, then a few more times around the bowl. Scrape bowl down. Add flour, wheat germ, oats, and chocolate and mix just until the flour disappears.
Arrange 3-tablespoon mounds of cookies 3 inches apart on the baking sheet. Sprinkle each with a couple flakes of sea salt. Bake for 12 to 14 minutes. Cookies will be golden brown all over. Remove from oven and let set up on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring them to a cooling rack.
(Source: smittenkitchen)
We added 3/4 cup roughly chopped pecans, and in place of the wheat germ, added 1/4 cup millet and chia seed mix. We used very dark chocolate and reduced the measurement to 3/4 cup. We did not use any flaky sea salt on the top, as we reduce salt wherever we can. We baked them for 14 minutes and let them cool for 5 on the cookie sheet. This cooling time firmed them up nicely! The recipe is also made in one bowl, which makes cleanup much easier. The great thing about this recipe is that it is completely customizable to suit your tastes. If you like dried cranberries, throw in 1/2 a cup. If you have a nut allergy, simply leave them out. February can be so dreary and gray, so we have made them four times now, and each time changed them a bit. The even better thing about these cookies is how healthy they are in comparison to most other cookies. The use of whole wheat, rolled oats, dark chocolate, and less processed sweeteners like turbinado and dark brown sugar, make a less sweet cookie, and that’s how we like it!