Ginger Date Oatmeal cookies and Chai Tea with Honey

Cold winter afternoons are perfect for hot tea and oatmeal cookies. Oatmeal cookies have been a long-standing favorite of mine for quite a while. It always was a blissful day when the box of oatmeal cookies came in the mail from my mother when I was away at college. We had an old gas stove from the 1950s that had to be lit with a match and did heat very evenly so inevitably some cookies were overcooked while others were near perfect. The overcooked cookies were a bit caramelized and hard but held up much better when dunking. I think I found my new favorite cookie.  Amy found a recipe online for ginger date oatmeal cookies here and immediately was interested. She modified the recipe a bit substituting the light corn syrup for light spring honey.   We have also been experimenting with substituting some or all of the sugar in recipes with monk fruit sugar. Cookies get very hot so only half of the sugar can be substituted as monk fruit will break down and lose its sweetness. The natural sugar seems to protect the monk fruit sugar from heat.

I like strong chai tea and it’s very easy to make. I find using a french press is perfect for loose tea. The one I use has a removable glass beaker and I can put just the beaker directly in the microwave. Fill the beaker with 3cups water a heaping tablespoon of loose tea, and add a dash of cardamom and a small piece of star anise. Anise is strong and can be overpowering so a little goes a long way so better to an error on less. A bit of almond milk and honey is the perfect combination.
The extract of the monk fruit is also known as Luo Han Guo (Siraitia grosvenorii), chemically is a sugar-alcohol that is approximately 300 times sweeter than sugar.  Monk fruit has been used as a natural sweetener in Chinese traditional medicine for about 1000 years. The sweetness of the fruit is due to five different mogrosides, the main of which is esgoside (mogroside V).

Honey has a high percentage of fructose which is a 6-carbon sugar compared to common sugar or sucrose a 12-carbon sugar. The simpler sugar will caramelize at a lower temperature so the cookie will be a bit darker than with normal sugar however it does not seem to affect the taste.

For detailed instructions follow the original recipe

Enjoy!