For Healthier Cookies...

Baked goods are a great way to "sneak" healthy ingredients into one's diet. Several tablespoons of ground flax seed can be substituted for part of the flour. Bean flours, like soy or garbanzo (known as besan in India), are great ways to add more protein to baked goods. The substitution of 1 Tbs. of bean flour in each cup of flour is enough. And don't forget wheat germ, oat or wheat bran--they add a good deal of fiber (as does the flax seed) as well as upping the nutritional load.

Recently I have found that using w/w pastry flour changes the texture of the baked goods in not a good way. This is true of several cookie recipies I use for Christmas, but otherwise it is a great way to work whole grain foods into your diet.

Thanks for the tips Kris. I agree, some recipes are better with regular whole grain flour and some are better with the whole grain pastry four. It takes a little experimentation to figure out what kind and what amount works with each recipe, but I've found that as I've been working in more whole grains I don't like the taste of plain white flour anymore. It tastes bland to me. Plus, whole grain is just so much better from a health perspective, I just read that whole grains dramatically cuts the risk of certain types of cancer, and I'm sure they'll be announcing similar findings in the future. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071123/hl_nm/fiber_grains_dc

I was not suggesting that anyone use plain whole wheat flour in any pastry/cookie. Whole wheat flour is great for bread, but not for anything that doesn't require gluten. My early experiences in whole foods cooking/baking in the early 70s proved that to me.

What I wrote is that you may substitute SOME whole wheat pastry flour for the unbleached all-purpose flour called for in the recipe.

You simply cannot change the majority of ingredients in any recipe without a drastic change in the results. But, as I suggested, you can substitute small amounts of ingredients that super-charge the nutritional load of any dish.