Monday, December 04, 2006

Apple Cinnamon Pomegranate Cookies

At the farmers market yesterday morning I picked up a pomegranate, just because I felt like it, and because pomegranates are cool. Then in the afternoon I was baking some apple cookies and I had an idea. I was using this recipe which has optional nuts and raisins, which I didn't really want to bother with. But I thought, why not toss in a bunch of pomeganate seeds instead? Would that even work? I didn't really know what would happen to pomegranate seeds if you baked them, and a quick bit of googling didn't turn up any existing cookie recipes that used them. So unfortunately I chickened out and just stuck some seeds into the last few cookies of the batch. I say "unfortunately" because it turned out to be awesome. The pomegranate seeds stay pretty much unchanged in the cookies, and give you blasts of juicy flavor when you hit one, like little pome-grenades. The next batch I do is going to have pomegranates all the way through.

Another thing I did put in this batch was a bunch of cinnamon chips that Lacey gave me last weekend. They're like mini chocolate chips, but cinnamon. And I love cinnamon. Unfortunately, while you can't go wrong with a cinnamon-apple combination, the chips sort of got lost among everything else. They're really small, plus the nutmeg, cloves, and apple chunks pretty much took over the flavor department. I think I'll cut back on nutmeg and cloves next time, too.

Still, all in all: Yummy!

Update: I had one experiment left over to today, and it turns out that the pomegranate seeds are really best when the cookies are right out of the oven. They dry up a bit by the next day, so you don't get such a shot of juice. Maybe that's why they're not so much used like raisins, which last relatively unchanged.

3 comments:

Miriam said...

Pomegrenades, huh? You and the Middle French. :) From etymonline.com:

Grenade
"small explosive shell," 1591, from M.Fr. grenade "pomegranate," from O.Fr. pomegrenate (infl. by Sp. granada), so called because the many-seeded fruit suggested the powder-filled, fragmenting bomb, or from similarities of shape.

The entry is unclear, and makes it sound like pomegranates were named because they resembled grenades, but if you check their entry for
pomegranate
, you'll find it's the other way around.

Christine said...

I'm not a huge cinnamon fan, but the cookies you brought into work today were so yummy! Thanks for sharing! Must learn to be patient with baking like you...=P

birdeeb said...

Awesome idea! I am trying to find a way to preserve pomegranates by either drying them or freezing them...I LOVE pomegranates & I think it's awesome you added them to your cookies! I will have to try that! ;o)