Tag Archives: cookies

Chewy Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

I’ve shared before that I’m not much of a baker. I like the immediacy of the cast iron skillet and the smell of frying garlic and onions, the excitement of modifying recipes as you go, and the mincing and dicing of fresh ingredients. Kneading dough and mixing flour and sugar . . . hasn’t been my thing. So it’s been up to my husband to supply the cookie needs of our little household. They used to just be his own cookie needs, but slowly he’s gotten me a little addicted. Cookies are pretty great for breakfast–they go so well with coffee!

Lately when we agree that it’s time for some baking to happen, I’ve been putting my oar in. I prod and plead and whine and beg my husband to let me try a new recipe. Pleeeeease? I just came across this recipe on Tasty Kitchen, see, and I think it could really be awesome . . .

See, my baby likes the old favorites. He’s faithful, loyal, and true–to his friends, but also to his cookies. Here he is feeling skeptical about this uncharted baking territory.

He’s like Just call me Mr. Skeptical.

I’m like Hey Mr. Skeptical. I really like you. But we can’t cling to the old ways! What about the sweet smell of culinary progress??

By the way, you’re hot.

My addiction to the smell of progress is the reason that sometimes dinner ends up in the trash . . . yep. I like living on the edge.

So back to cookies: this recipe is great. I’m not going to go around shouting through a bullhorn that it’s the best cookie recipe in the world. It might be, it might not be–I just don’t have that much experience with cookies. All I can say is that I have trouble when it’s time to stop eating them. That I had them religiously for breakfast until the cookie jar was empty. They are hearty and chewy, which is exactly what I want at 9am in the morning. My husband (so faithful to his regular recipe) says the jury is still out for him, because the quick oats give them a kind of grainy texture. But I love them that way! So I’ll share with you. And if any of you have to-die-for cookie recipes that this here cookie novice needs to try, please send me a link or give me instructions in the comments! I have so much to learn.

To flex the muscles of this new baking impulse, there will be more recipes for sweet treats coming up Monday and Tuesday. I hope you don’t mind. We’ll break things up with a delicious savory recipe soon enough, don’t worry.

Ingredients

2 sticks butter, softened

1 c brown sugar, packed firmly

1/2 c sugar

2 eggs

2 tsp vanilla

1 ½ c flour

1 tsp baking soda

½ tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon (optional)

3 c quick oats

1 c chocolate or butterscotch chips

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Then, enlist some man-hands to unwrap the softened butter so that your camera doesn’t get greasy.

Thanks, man-hands.

Put the butter in a mixer bowl, and add in the white sugar . . .

. . . and the firmly packed brown sugar.

Beat together the butter and sugars until they’re creamy. Sorry for the butt-ugly picture.

Add the eggs–looks like I had just enough!

Add the vanilla, too–I was plumb out of extract, but had this cool vanilla paste thingy that I got from a trade show last year. It’s thick like a syrup, and smells like paradise.

Hello, batter! I hope you’re not teeming with salmonella, because my finger is about to make the journey from bowl to mouth.

Now beat that good stuff until it’s nice and mixed.

Now if you’re a good boy or girl, you will mix together your dry ingredients in a separate bowl, and then add them to the wet batter all at once.

That avoids clumps of salt or baking soda and the like. However, I couldn’t be bothered with getting another bowl dirty, so I dumped it all in and then did a little mixy-mixy-mixeroo among the dry ingredients with a spoon before turning the mixer back on.

Here goes the flour:

Followed by the salt . . .

. . . and the baking soda.

I skipped the cinnamon–I didn’t feel like it for some reason. But you’re welcome to add it!

Mix it for a couple minutes. It will come together pretty quickly.

Time for the quick oats!

Mix them in, too.

It will get very, very thick at this point, and start sticking to the stirry thingamadging on your mixer.

Pause briefly for a taste, if that’s your thang . . .

. . . and pour in the chocolate chips.

Oh yes.

At this point the dough was so thick that I abandoned the mixer and grabbed a trusty old wooden spoon to finish the job. Much cookie dough was eaten along the way.

Shape the dough into rounds and place them on an ungreased cookie sheet. You can make smaller cookies (heaping tablespoonfuls of batter) and bake 10-12 minutes:

Or you can go with larger ice-cream scoop sized cookies and bake them for about 15 minutes.

We chose both options. Note: these cookies will not flatten out very much during baking, so I like to press the balls of dough flat with the palm of my hand before baking, to get a wider cookie as opposed to a taller one.

Let them rest for 1 minute when they come out of the oven before moving them to a wire rack to cool.

As a non-baker, I was surprised at how mushy and gooey they were right out of the oven, and I wondered if they were really done or if they needed more time in the oven. So if you are inexperienced as I am, don’t be alarmed! They will solidify as they cool.

The bottoms: perfect.

If only my bottom were that perfect.

But that’s not what we’re talking about here!

We’re talking about these cookies. And how great they are, tops, bottoms, and middles.

 

Have a great weekend, and see you Monday for another sugar-laden experience.

Click here for printer-friendly version: Chewy Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

PW Weekend: a lesson in cookie decorating

During the food fest that was two Saturdays ago at the Pioneer Woman’s Lodge, there was a beautiful cookie decorating demonstration by Bridget, a cookie maker and food blogger extraordinaire with the sweetest personality you ever saw.

And the most adorable red ringlets.

Cookies had been prebaked and brought in for us, and you can get the recipe for those fantastic Vanilla-Almond Sugar Cookies here. Loads of supplies were standing by, just waiting for us to get our grubby little hands on them.

Sprinkles, glittering colored sugar, edible gold dust . . .

Squeeze bottles for the icing, and little bottles of food coloring.

Women were starting to trickle in–local women, friends of Ree’s, friends of the Drummond family. This is Ree’s godmother!

An amazing woman.

I should probably also introduce you to the other guests. I’ve been so caught up in talking about Charlie the basset hound that I’ve barely talked about the wonderful, wonderful people! Sorry, ladies. There were 4 winners, and each of us brought someone with us. Molly brought her mother Susie:

Christy brought her (adorably pregnant) best friend Kathryn:

Jennifer brought her friend Ann . . .

. . . and finally, I brought my Mom.

I’m trying not to make apologies, but I have to be true to myself. Why is the color balance off in every single one of those pictures? What was I doing?? Was I on Photoshop drugs or something? In fact, did I even process these pictures myself, or did the Photoshop gnome villains hack into my system . . . again?

Definitely the Photoshop gnome villains. Those little squirts with their little red caps and hairy little toes.

Or we can just pretend I did it on purpose to give each picture individuality–a pink/red tone for Molly and Susie, a yellow tone for Christy and Kathryn, and a bluish hue for Jennifer and Ann. And my color balance problems don’t end here, but I’ll try to shut up about it. For the most part.

We enjoyed Ree’s coffee–big time.

As all the women gathered, Christy and I ran around snappity snapping with our cameras. We were still slightly freaking out.

Hi Christy! I’m sorry I made you so yellow earlier, and now so pink. Your skin is actually a beautiful, normal color.

I met the lovely Hyacinth, who I’ve been reading about for over a year.

Her haircut is seriously the cutest thing. “Hyacinth, will you tattoo your name and the name of your hair stylist on my left arm?” I asked.

“Um, you’re a very weird girl, but I’ll pose for a picture with you if you promise to stay at least 10 feet away from me the rest of the day,” she responded graciously.

I jumped at the chance.

We actually had a lovely conversation, and since she didn’t get a restraining order against me afterwards, I assume she thought it was lovely too.

Once we were all gathered, Bridget passed out recipes and instructions.

I studied them carefully in case there was a pop quiz at the end.

Ree was looking slightly impish.

Bridget demonstrated how to make Royal Icing–the stiff kind that you use to pipe your outlines on the cookie, and the ‘flooding’ kind that is a little more liquidy, and fills in the piped area with the color of your choice.

It was so delicious that I grabbed the mixer attachment and stuffed the whole thing in my mouth, to the horror of all the guests. Then Ree screamed “get this crazed woman out of my house!” and the icing and I fled across the open prairie in shame, where I hoped the wild mustangs would take me in as one of their own.

I kid! But you probably knew that already.

Ree would never send me from her house in a fit or rage. She’s just not the ‘fit of rage’ kinda lady. She’s the kind who would join me in licking every ounce of frosting off that mixer. The picture above is my proof.

The demonstration was so much fun.

All the ladies were so warm, so friendly, and so conversational.

Once the icing was mixed, it was time to start decorating 5 tons of cookies.

These all-important pictures show Bridget piping the outline with the royal icing that she will later fill in with flood icing.

Well this should be easy, I thought to myself. You kind of draw on a cookie, type of thing.

Hah! I couldn’t draw a straight line to save my own sorry hide.

Everyone suddenly got very, very focused.

Ree’s girls were so into it.

What if the PW sees my wonky lines of icing and rejects me forever? I thought. Maybe I should just destroy the evidence and slip this mangled cookie into my mouth.

But I didn’t. I proceeded as planned, and tried to erase the error of my ways with the glossy, gorgeous flood icing. Use a toothpick to get it to the edges–if it goes on its own, it’s too liquidy and the cookies will never dry. Let’s take a look at Bridget’s progress:

It’s so easy to make beautiful designs with the flood icing, simply by making swirls with a toothpick.

Unfortunately my little beauties got a little bashed up on the plane ride the next morning.

I’m not a baker by nature, but I could have decorated these cookies all day long.

My Mom’s cookies turned out beautifully.

She’s such an artist.

You can read Ree’s blog post about the experience here.

It was so much fun to see the Pioneer Woman in action, snapping the step by step photographs that you can click on over and see on her blog. Wild stuff, I’m telling you.

Simply wild. And her camera has a wicked fast shutter speed.

Christmas is approaching, and how much fun would it be to get together with a bunch of girls and have a massive cookie decorating party?

Lotsa fun, I’m telling you. Especially if you send me a little care package with the results . . . see, I’m an FDA-approved, um, cookie analyst.

And especially if two amazing chefs, Lia and Tiffany, come in and make you a killer salad for lunch. Here’s Lia, the toffee-making, truffle-creating Chef of wonders.

The toffee and truffles deserve their own post.

Here’s Tiffany, another lovely redhead. Seriously–Ree, Tiffany, Bridget–all redheads. All amazing cooks. I’m thinking something funky is going on here.

This was the best salad I’ve ever had. The components alone were already spectacular, especially the roasted fennel bulbs. I snuck a couple off the baking sheet.

Shrimp, scallops, fresh greens = I love everything and everyone in the world.

Add to that a glass of berry lemonade . . . oh yeah.

There’s more to come in this series. I make no promises on how fast they will appear since Christmas is practically at our door, but fudge, toffee, wild horses, and more kitty cats are in our future.

So don’t be goin’ anywhere!

That was figurative. You should totally get up to pee if you have to.