Running with the Pack Podcast

This week, we cover a ton of topics including Stevie’s vacation plans, my bike update, body image, what to do when you’re injured (cross train and do a triathlon obviously), mud/adventure runs, margarita cliff blocks, gluten free life, Facebook mania, and more.

Stevie and I talk about my experiment with Teff cookies, Stevie’s elevated heart rate, some recent races and two personal records (kinda), the idea that personal records should expire as you change age groups, our new Facebook page, Jason’s new podcast, Simon’s race with his brother, Rebecca running nude (and fast), and a shout out to Iron Brandon for reaching the 100-episode mark!

If you listen to the podcast, you know that I’m a bit of a mad scientist. I especially like to experiment with food, which has lead to both positive and negative results. [If you ever meet Andrew, ask him about the polenta story or maybe the time I tried to use olive oil in a brownie mix.]

Today, I decided to try making gluten-free snickerdoodles. I’ll give you the ending first: the result is a cookie with a soft and fluffy, but slightly gritty texture. The flavor is AWESOME (in my opinion). I’m very happy with it, and so is Andrew.

The main difference between this and a normal snickerdoodle recipe is that I used teff flour. Teff is a tiny grain from Africa that is gluten-free as well as high in fiber and minerals like iron and calcium. It’s a staple of the Ethiopian diet – and we all know how fast Ethiopian runners are. So will these cookies make you faster? I really don’t think so, but it’s a fun thought. This is not what I would consider a low-fat or low-calorie recipe.

So without further ado, here is the recipe that I used today. If you follow this recipe, let me know how it turns out.

Ingredients for dough:
1 stick (1/2 cup) of butter
2 egg whites
1 teaspoon vanilla
3/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 cup teff flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Ingredients for coating:
4 teaspoons sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon

Soften the butter by leaving it out long enough to rise to room temperature or sticking it in the microwave in a microwave-safe mixing bowl for about 20 seconds. Add the two egg whites and the vanilla to the butter and mix them together. Add the sugar, teff flour, and baking soda to the wet ingredients and mix until even. The dough should look like dark brown sand – more like the color of ginger snaps than traditional snickerdoodles.

Stick the dough in the refrigerator for about 10 minutes to chill. As you do this, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Get a small bowl and make the coating mix – a 2 to 1 combination of sugar and cinnamon. Also, get out two cookie sheets and put down a layer of parchment paper on each one.

After the dough has been chilling for 10 minutes, get it out of the refrigerator. Scoop a heaping teaspoon of the dough and drop it into the coating mixture. Roll the dough ball in the cinnamon and sugar until it is coated. Then put the ball on the cookie sheet and flatten it a bit into a disk shape. Repeat this with the rest of the dough, putting them about an inch apart on the cookie sheet. They’ll expand as they cook and you don’t want them to fuse together when they bake. Depending on the size of your dough balls, you’ll get about 12-15 cookies.

Bake the cookies for 10 minutes. Take the parchment paper and slide it (cookies and all) onto a cool surface like another cookie sheet, cutting board, or the kitchen counter. The cookies will be extremely soft when they come out of the oven and should cool for about 15 minutes before firming up.

After the cookies are firm, grab one, take a bite, and then leave a comment to let me know what you think.

Stevie and I talk about the Happy Valley Sprint Triathlon that I did on Saturday and the Firecracker 4K race that we ran on Sunday plus some upcoming events. Stevie also updates us on her progress through the Insanity Workout.