I love smoked food, love it, smoked sausage, salmon, porter, jerky, chowders, pretty much anything. Usually, I like my food to kick me in the face with the smokiness of it, but sometimes subtlety has it’s advantages as well. Last spring, when Jessica was visiting, I happened to be smoking some bacon. Jess suggested we try smoking some sugar and flour as well with the bacon. Now Jessica can bake, she can, but she doesn’t like to, so she really was suggesting that I smoke some flour and sugar and bake her something with it.
The smoking of the flour and sugar was easy (see the recipes below). The question was, “What should I bake”. Now, I love to bake, I like the act of baking more than the eating of what I make. The eating is a side bonus of baking. If I don’t bake often enough, I feel itchy, a longing creeps on me to bake something, anything. Anyways, I tried to look up some recipes for using smoked flour and sugar on Pinterest, and Pinterest failed me! I couldn’t believe it. Since Pinterest failed me I decided to make my own recipe.
To me, the most obvious combination of smoke with baked goods should be chocolate. So I took my absolute favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe (based on the recipe found in the Moosewood Desserts Cookbook) and altered it to use smoked flour and sugar. Now I have posted the recipe before, but it was a more healthy version using whole wheat flour and honey instead. You can find that recipe here. Not to toot my own horn here, but these smokey cookies are good. They are subtly smoky, so subtle that they made the cookies just….better. Most of the smokiness disappears during the baking process, so it’s not a ‘kick you in the face’ smoky but just the right amount of smoke.
I’m sure somewhere you can find smoked flour and sugar in a store but I haven’t seen it and I bet it won’t be cheap. I have seen bourbon sugar in specialty stores but again it’s very expensive. But if you can find it and don’t want to smoke your own, go ahead, the cookies will still be good. For those who want to do it all, the recipe for smoked sugar, flour, and cookies are below.
Smoked Bourbon Sugar
This recipe is easily doubled or tripled. I found the best use of this sugar is to sprinkle it on top of the dessert right before baking rather than replacing normal sugar or honey in the recipe. And now that I think about it, I bet this would be really good in coffee.
Ingredients
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 2 Tbl bourbon
- alder chips for smoking the sugar
Instructions
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In a small bowl mix the bourbon and sugar together until the mixture is uniformly damp.
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Put the mixture into a glass pie dish or something similar, and pat gently down until the mixture is spread evenly over the pie dish bottom.
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Cold smoke the sugar mixture for 6 hours. You’ll be able to smell the smoke in the sugar when it’s done.
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The flour mixture will dry semi-hard. Break the mixture in the pie plate by putting a wooden spoon down onto the sugar and tapping the spoon with a meat tenderizer or something hard. Roughly cut the sugar with a large knife on a cutting board. Or if you have a food mill, break the pieces of sugar up with your finger into grape size pieces and grind with the food mill. This seems to work the best for me.
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Store in a tupperware or glass jar.
Smoked sugar broken out of the plate. 
The food mill worked great to grind the sugar to a fine consistency without making the sugar too powdery.
This smoked flour recipe is effortless and is a side bonus of smoking meats. If you are smoking anything else throw some flour in the smoker too. I think the key to this recipe is the thickness of the flour in the pan so the smoke can penetrate the flour. Oh, and if there is snow on top of your smoker, brush the snow off first or the snow will melt into your pan of flour making a really spectacular paste. I know because I have done this.
Smoked Flour
Ingredients
- 4 cups white flour
- alder chips for smoking
Instructions
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Spread the flour out in a metal pan, 1/2″-1″ thick.
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Cold smoke the flour for 6 hours.
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That’s it. Store the flour in a jar or double bag it in a ziplock, the smokey smell is rather strong.
So I use my smoked flour and smoke bourbon sugar to make Smokey Cowboy Cookies. They’re my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe ever. I’ve also sprinkled the bourbon sugar on brownies as well and they were pretty good.
Smokey Cowboy Cookies
A chocolate chip oat cookie enhanced by a subtle smokiness.
Ingredients
- 1 cup butter room temperature
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 2 cups smoked white flour
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 2 cups rolled oats
- 1 1/2 cups chocolate chips
- 1/2 cup coconut, dried cranberries, or nuts optional
- 1/8 cup smoked bourbon sugar
Instructions
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In a large bowl cream the butter, brown sugar, and normal granulated sugar with an electric mixture.
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Add the eggs and vanilla and beat well.
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In a separate bowl, combine the smoked flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder.
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Add the dry ingredients to the butter-sugar mixture and blend.
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Pour in the chocolate chips, oats, nuts, etc., into the mixture, turn the mixer on low then gradually increase the speed until mostly blended.
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Turn off the electric mixer and scoop the bottom of the bowl with a wooden spoon and fold the mixture together.
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Using a teaspoon, plop walnut sized cookie dough chunks onto a cookie sheet leaving 1″ of space between cookies.
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Sprinkle the cookies with smoked bourbon sugar.
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Bake for 12 minutes at 325F.
