The Local Batch’s Benchmark Cookie
A truly bespoke, super delicious, deeply dark chocolate taste of consumable goodness!
Traditional Ingredients: Close to Nature, made to Nurture
The Benchmark Cookie is designed to please even the most sophisticated taste buds, mingling flavors and textures throughout.
The Benchmark Cookie also aims to please our bodies beyond the awareness of our senses. For example, can a taste bud discern if a food is grown with or without pesticides? Probably not, but our bodies can. Can we taste which vitamins are in the flour? I don't think so but our bodies know!
All our ingredients are used in their form closest to nature so we can enjoy the cookie's great taste and let our natural bodies enjoy the nutrition nature provides!
The Benchmark Cookie also aims to please our bodies beyond the awareness of our senses. For example, can a taste bud discern if a food is grown with or without pesticides? Probably not, but our bodies can. Can we taste which vitamins are in the flour? I don't think so but our bodies know!
All our ingredients are used in their form closest to nature so we can enjoy the cookie's great taste and let our natural bodies enjoy the nutrition nature provides!
1. Butter Progression
Sweet Cream
I baked for many years with Breakstone sweet butter because that is what my grandma used. When I learned about Traditional Foods I upgraded to Kerry Gold, imported from Ireland. When I got really serious and launched The Local Batch, I searched and found Kriemhild Meadow butter! It brings their New York farms' 100% grass fed quality and deliciousness to my cookies which even though twice the price of the imported butter, adds so much taste and nutritional value.
In their own words, "Kriemhild dairy farms is a small farmer owned agribusiness specializing in high quality full-fat and cultured dairy foods with milk sourced from grass-based herds in Central New York. The butter is made by slowly churning fresh sweet cream into an 85% butter fat resulting in a creamy and flavorful butter."
Why is grass fed better? To be concise, a cow's digestive system was designed to digest grass, not grains, legumes or other types of feed. A cow will be less prone to illness eating the food it is made to eat and it's milk will carry that benefit to whoever consumes it.
By feeding in pasture land they work the soil with their hooves, fertilize it and sustain themselves. This grazing practice actually allows the earth to collect carbon.
To learn more about why grass fed products are sustainable, nutritional and great for us and the environment, take a look at these links:
Kiss the Ground - This is a wonderful documentary about grazing and its universal benefits to the soil and all that comes from it
Home - The Weston A. Price Foundation - This foundation is a wealth of info on nutrition and traditional foods
The "Grass-Fed" Milk Story: Understanding the Impact of Pasture Feeding on the Composition and Quality of Bovine Milk - This is a peer reviewed study as the title describes
By feeding in pasture land they work the soil with their hooves, fertilize it and sustain themselves. This grazing practice actually allows the earth to collect carbon.
To learn more about why grass fed products are sustainable, nutritional and great for us and the environment, take a look at these links:
Kiss the Ground - This is a wonderful documentary about grazing and its universal benefits to the soil and all that comes from it
Home - The Weston A. Price Foundation - This foundation is a wealth of info on nutrition and traditional foods
The "Grass-Fed" Milk Story: Understanding the Impact of Pasture Feeding on the Composition and Quality of Bovine Milk - This is a peer reviewed study as the title describes
2. Chocolate Fantasy
organic chocolate 71% cacao couverture (organic cacao beans, organic cane sugar, organic cacao butter)
Needless to say, these are not your typical semi sweet chocolate bits. Of all the chocolate companies based in New York, Raaka Chocolate caught my attention by calling their chocolate, unroasted. I made Raaka Chocolate my first taste test and they wound up being my favorite. The flavor is so incredibly delicious and does indeed carry a note of fruitiness that makes it unlike any other!
3. Flour Power
Fresh milled organic wheat berries!
To use the whole wheat berry in its entirety and natural form is so simple. The grains are self contained, nature preserved packets of energy and nutrition in 3 parts, the bran, wheat germ and endosperm.
Milling the berries right before baking, keeps all of this naturally occurring nutrition in tact and needs no special processing or refinement - the only variable is the size of the grind. The unground berries can be stored in a closed container and will keep as long as no moisture gets in. This is the simplicity and completeness of nature and this is why The Local Batch grinds the flour for each batch right before mixing!
See the nutritional difference between typical whole wheat berry and unfortified white flour, which has had the bran and wheat germ removed, even flour that has been fortified typically only reintroduces a small number of nutrients, mainly iron, thiamin, riboflavin, niacin and folate, and does not come close to what a whole wheat berry offers.
Milling the berries right before baking, keeps all of this naturally occurring nutrition in tact and needs no special processing or refinement - the only variable is the size of the grind. The unground berries can be stored in a closed container and will keep as long as no moisture gets in. This is the simplicity and completeness of nature and this is why The Local Batch grinds the flour for each batch right before mixing!
See the nutritional difference between typical whole wheat berry and unfortified white flour, which has had the bran and wheat germ removed, even flour that has been fortified typically only reintroduces a small number of nutrients, mainly iron, thiamin, riboflavin, niacin and folate, and does not come close to what a whole wheat berry offers.
We use soft white wheat berries sourced from Pleaseant Hill Grains and New York State einkorn grains sourced from Farmer Ground .
4. All inclusive sweetness
Organic Panela
Sugar gets a bad rap but if we use it in its form closest to nature with minimal processing, sugar can be nutritious too. Take a look at the nutrition in the Panela we use! Compare that to a popular box or bag of sugar on the supermarket shelf!
5. Pastured eggs
There is a wonderful in depth blog article written by Michael Kummer comparing all the various egg types, cage free, organic, etc. Pastured eggs are the best of the best. The Local Batch visited the Queens County Farm Museum to highlight their wonderful eggs coming from well fed, healthy chickens. Check out the video below!
6. Vanilla
Sun dried whole vanilla bean powder
Some time ago while experimenting, I decided to double the amount of vanilla in a recipe I was using and the results were fabulous. This little ingredient by volume, is such a huge part of a cookie's flavor personality (does a cookie have a personality?).
Of course at that time I was using liquid vanilla in a tiny brown bottle but for The Local Batch, I wanted to find the best of the best, closest to nature and I found a French company, Prova, that produces pure vanilla bean powder, nothing added, just the whole bean, dried and ground!
When you eat a Benchmark Cookie, your taste buds will notice a unique soft tartness coming from the sun dried vanilla. It truly elevates the flavor and gives it a tiny bit of sophistication, like the toile tablecloth in a sod prairie house!
Learn more about the art of vanilla production in this brochure:
Of course at that time I was using liquid vanilla in a tiny brown bottle but for The Local Batch, I wanted to find the best of the best, closest to nature and I found a French company, Prova, that produces pure vanilla bean powder, nothing added, just the whole bean, dried and ground!
When you eat a Benchmark Cookie, your taste buds will notice a unique soft tartness coming from the sun dried vanilla. It truly elevates the flavor and gives it a tiny bit of sophistication, like the toile tablecloth in a sod prairie house!
Learn more about the art of vanilla production in this brochure:
| prova_vanilla_brochure.pdf |
7. Baking soda
8. Unrefined mineral salt
This salt is delicious, domestic and unrefined!
9. The Packaging
The Local Batch cookie tins, labels, wax paper and string are all made here in the US. The cellophane mini packs are made in the US and are biodegradable.