Mesquite Chocolate Chip Cookies - kind of

I've been dying to make something out of this cookbook I bought last year

I've mentioned it on here several times, but have never done it. One thing I've been waiting for is I've been trying to find mesquite flour. I found some yesterday and ordered it, but in the meantime, I wanted to go ahead and try to make these cookies using a couple of substitutions. 

I am a BIG believer in whole ingredients or ingredients that have not been chemically processed. This book has a lot of recipes on substitutions for standard items such as flour, sugar, etc. I've already been making my usual baked goods with whole wheat flour or whole wheat pastry flour as well as cane sugar vs white sugar,  kosher salt instead of regular salt, etc. I just recently found out that sea salt is better than kosher salt because kosher salt is still processed chemically, so once I run out of that, I'll buy sea salt. Also, you'll see in the picture below that I still have regular baking soda and baking powder. I definitely will switch once these are out, but I'm not going to throw away a full package of something so... 

The recipe calls for  -

1 cup mesquite flour

2 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour

3/4 teaspoon sea salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 cups of raw cane sugar

3 eggs

1 cup unsalted butter

1 tablespoon vanilla

2 cups rolled oats

1 package of semi sweet chocolate chips

I didn't have mesquite flour so what I did instead 

2 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour

1/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour mixed with 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Heat your oven to 375 and grease your cookie sheet (I personally use my stoneware because I like the way it cooks better)

Mix all of your flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder and set aside. 

cream butter until smooth - my butter did not come out smooth, it was clumpy and separate

add sugar until a frosting like consistency - still clumpy

add vanilla - this is when it started smoothing out

add 1 egg at a time, allowing each one to blend into the butter/sugar mixture - really smoothed out

add flour mixture

add oats

add chocolate chips

Each cookie should be 1 tablespoons so that it looks like this - 

So one thing I took a chance on was the amount of extra flour I added. It called for a cup of mesquite flour which typically is substituted 1/4 cup per cup of flour. I thought, ok, so I'll just use 1/4 cup of flour instead of the full extra cup. What ended up happening was the cookies melted out a little too flat. I noticed that as I was cooking the first batch, so I put the last cookie sheet in the fridge. That batch turned out a little better. Next time, I will go ahead and add 1 cup of flour. 

The cayenne pepper added a little heat which was kind of nice. Of course, I forgot to take a picture of the final product but they were crispy which I like. If you like a chewier cookie, adding more flour will help that. They had a good combination of chocolate, oats, a little heat and cookie dough. I actually really liked them and hopefully, my adjustments for next time will make them even better. I also ordered some mesquite flour so we'll see what they taste like when I do that.