Is there any fruit more beautiful than the Pomegranate? I don't think so. When I found a recipe that included the arils (the name of the seed fruit from a pomegranate) I knew I had my next week's idea. The original called for dark chocolate, but I knew cashews (my second favorite nut after macadamias) and white chocolate would pair perfectly with this power fruit.
Even whole, a pomegranate is beautiful.
Crack it open though, and the real beauty emerges. Look at those juicy ripe arils.
Getting them all out whole takes time and patience.
The key ingredients: roasted salted cashews, pomegranate arils, and white chocolate chips. This is a cup of each, but each delivery is a half cup of each. That's a lot of delicious!
Now to start on the dough. White and brown sugars,
Plus butter,
and an egg, equals
A very gooey dough start.
Mmmmm, oats.
Here I've added the oats, flour, rising agents and salt to the butter/sugar/egg mixture.
If you work with dough often, you have to get these. A silicon mat, and a flour shaker. This saves so much cleanup time, and the flour shaker helps put a light dusting of flour on your surface. Using your hand makes it much too thick.
Here is the raw dough without the special ingredients. This could be baked up into a delightful plain oatmeal cookie.
I mix in the white chocolate first, since it's the most durable.
Cashews next.
Arils last, and I try to be very delicate so as not to pop too many of them.
Rolled out and cut, ready for baking.
In the oven... mmmmm they smelled so good while baking.
Done and cooling. The secret to chewy cookies is to find just the right baking time, and to transfer them immediately to a cooling rack. A cookie sheet maintains a bit of heat and continues to cook the bottom of the cookie if you leave the cookies on the tray.
Once cooled I love seeing them all piled up.
In the package, look at how tempting the bright red flecks and white chocolate chunks peeking out are.
The vanilla and white chocolate start, moves to cashew flavor, and with bites of pomegranate tang, all inside the chewy sweet oatmeal cookie.
The best way to take out the delicious pomegranate is to simply cut it in half and bang it hard (with a ladle or something like that) into a bowl, comes out easy and quick! give it a go :D
ReplyDeleteI'll try the ladle bit, but cutting it all the way in half destroys many arils. I found a tip online that if you only cut a bit into the crown (where the little flowery top bit is) you won't cut any arils. Then you can pull it apart with your hand, in half. I think I might have lost maybe 2 arils to the knife this way.
ReplyDeleteI'll post back today since I'll have tried your ladle suggestion. :-)