Lookit what I got!
In case you aren’t a homebrewer, that there is spent grain. This is what’s left after you brew the beer (but before it ferments), and it’s often used as fertilizer, mulch or animal feed. But it’s just grains, full of fiber and totally good for you, so my pal Heather filled up a nice big bag for me to play with. What a doll!
I found this recipe and tried a couple batches. The first was the recipe as written (which includes peanut butter—not my favourite), and the second was my little take, sans peanut butter and nuts. And the winner is . . . definitely the recipe as written. Mine came out dense and I daresay even fudgy, but not the good kind like you want. Also, the peanut butter doesn’t shine, it just adds to the nuttiness of the grains, and though I could probably work out some butter in its place, I would make this with peanut butter again. I did replace the oil with butter because I think it makes things a little fluffier and I felt these ran the risk of being too dense. But these tasted like super-earthy oatmeal cookies. I used only whole wheat flour and it didn’t even taste like dirt!
And hey if you don’t have access to these, no worries! I would imagine this recipe would work well for any grain mixture you might prefer. I’m thinking of bulgur in particular, but I’m not big on grain cereals. Since these grains are wet when they go in the recipe, make sure yours are cooked (and wet) before you measure them and toss them in.
Let’s take a look!
Say what you want about the taste and calorie content, peanut butter is beautiful. Onto the dry ingredients.
At this point, I felt like it was time to spread these on a pinecone, and was a little skeptical about the recipe.
These are generous tablespoons smushed down just a little bit so they’ll have a nice cookie shape.
My MY aren’t you all so lovely.
Enjoy!
Nutty Spent Grain Chocolate Chip Cookies
Adapted from a recipe featured by Seven Bridges Cooperative.
1/3 cup peanut butter
2 tbsp melted butter
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
1.5 cups spent grains (or alternatively, 1.5 cups of your favourite grain meal, prepared and still wet)
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup chocolate chips
1/2 cup chopped nuts
Mix in the peanut butter, regular butter, sugar, milk and vanilla. Then add the flour, baking soda and salt. Once that’s all mixed, stir in the nuts and chips.
Bake on a greased cookie sheet at 425F for 8-10 minutes until the tops are just getting golden, but before the bottoms burn. Let sit on the pan for about five minutes before transferring to wire rack to cool. Serve with love.
Makes about 2 dozen cookies after batter sampling.
does your friend heather make a good homebrew? whee! i want to pick up homebrewing and make my own pumpkin ale.
those cookies look nom-nomish by the way.
Looks really good..and especially with the word “chocolate”
I love this idea… makes me think that I need to get a hold of some spent grain. Maybe Amanda has it right, and I need to brew some of my own beer… and THEN make cookies!
Amanda – I’m not really sure, I don’t like beer, no matter how much I try. But I’ve heard tell it’s very good.
Lo – Totally! I’m glad I have friends making it so I don’t have to to get the grains, haha.
what a creative use for whole grains! have you tried subbing almond butter for the peanut butter? i think the flavor is far superior, but it would still add that nuttiness that you’re looking for…
So! I love every recipe, and change to a recipe you have ever posted- you’re amazing. And, I have something equally amazing, or so I choose to think: CLIF BAR COOKIES!
I took your recipe and decided, because I was lazy and HAD granola, to use granola. And then I boiled it and prepared it like grain and waited a while for it to cool.
Well, I had the rest of the ingredients just sitting there waiting and then when I thought the granola was done, I threw it in. It wasn’t done, and so those yummy chocolate chips melted in.
Tasted the batter, thought it was decent, let it cool fully, added another serving of chocolate chips so that I could have the chippy bits in my cookies.
Oh, and I added almonds.
And, then I baked them in my temperamental gas oven- they turned into an almost muffin texture- and they tasted extraordinarily close to those scrumptious chocolate clif bars.
I’m a homebrewer and am so glad to no longer be throwing away my spent grains. A good friend back home in CA sent me this recipe, knowing I’ve really picked up the pace brewing here in Chicago. Both times I substituted brown sugar for white, most recently it was more half (brown) and half (white) though, using up what I had around the house. I found that the cookies were increasingly tastier as a function of the type of beer I brewed…i.e. a nice red ale uses grains more conducive to cookies than a lager. Thanks for the great recipe! They are quite popular everywhere my brews/baked goods have gone!!
AWESOME!!! My husband brews and I use the spent grains to make these! They are wonderful. Thanks for passing the recipe on.
Ms. Om Nom,
First off, big thanks for this recipe. I’m a homebrewer and have been using my spent grains to make batches of these wonders since finding this page. Question, however: How to fix the problem of hard/crunchy bits of grain in the cookies? Most of each cookie is soft and proper, but there’re always tough grains in each one. A matter of how fine to mill the grain, perhaps?
Again, you’ve done homebrewers a fine service with this one–top marks.
The recipe doesnt specify when the grains go in…im sure its not a huge deal but i put them before nuts and chips.
[...] Meanwhile I took some of his spent grain (grain that the sugar has been extracted from), and took on a little recipe of my own: Spent grain cookies. You may remember my last attempt at spent grain cookies, which ended in disaster, but this time I totally nailed it. Thanks Omnomicon for the great recipe! [...]
[...] chip cookies My wife found this recipe while I was doing a big RIS with 30# of grain. Link to recipe on omnomicon.com. These are *delicious*. I expected to be picking rice hulls out of my teeth, but they're actually [...]
[...] (nostalgia, maybe?) posted this spent grain cookie recipe the other day. http://www.omnomicon.com/spent-grain-cookies. I just made the batter up and yum, [...]
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