Chomp!

It's October! Time to give an official welcome to fall (a little late) with a new cookie recipe.

My friend Jan and I got together last week to give these mesquite chocolate chip cookies a try. The recipe is from Heidi Swanson's book, Super Natural Cooking, and calls for an ingredient I hadn't used before: mesquite flour. It wasn't available in my local grocery story, or Whole Foods, or even Trader Joe's. Luckily, we have a Dean & Deluca nearby and they do carry it. (You can also find it online.)

Mesquite flour is gluten-free, though you also use regular flour in the recipe. The texture is similar to that of regular flour, with a golden yellow color and a distinctive scent. The mesquite flour is supposed to give the cookies a smoky flavor, though for me the taste was very subtle. At a cost of $12 a pound it's definitely the most expensive ingredient in these cookies!

My take? The cookies were delicious out of the oven and the next day as well, but maybe not as different as I'd expected or hoped. If you're looking for something new to try, these may be it. But I'm not sure they'll be my everyday, go-to cookies.

P.S. If you do try them, give me a shout. I'd like to know what you think! And by the way, the recipe used to be posted online but Heidi removed it from her blog; you can find it in her book now instead. The recipe posted on this blog appears to be the same one.