22 August 2010

better yet oatmeal cookies, y'all just rookies to me

Please note: y'all are most definitely not just rookies to me. I always have plenty to learn. Just couldn't deny myself a good cookie-related lyric from one of my favourite songs.


Oatmeal cookies, and the Chocolate Chip Cookies that they overlap with on the Venn Diagram of Cookie Genres (it might exist...) are nothing new, and there are roughly a million recipes out there for them, but still, even if you didn't grow up with tins full of baking, there's something old-fashionedly comforting about biting into a half-crisp, half-chewy biscuit, buttery and caramelly and a little nutty with rolled oats, maybe with some chunks of dark chocolate to luxe things up deliciously. They're fast to make and relatively inexpensive and keep for as long as you can hold out from eating them.

They also, a lot of the time, involve creaming butter and sugar together. We don't have a microwave and the butter conditioner in the fridge just sits there stubbornly making the butter colder, so anything with softened butter either requires wrapping it up in tinfoil and sitting it near the heater, on the coffee maker, whichever's on, or back when we had our PC, on top of the hard drive. Or leaving the butter out overnight and hoping the kitchen is be warm enough to soften it into cream-able submission. Which means there's generally a bit of a distance between myself and oatmeal cookies. Or at least there was, until I saw this recipe that I'm going to share with you...


I found this recipe on a blog called The Hungry Engineer. It awesomely uses oil which I could then take the liberty of switching with melted butter. Not that I have anything against oil. I just want butter in my life and I figure that they're similar enough to not get fussed over. That said, if you stick to the original recipe, you've got yourself a mighty good dairy-free cookie. And I've got something that I don't have to enter into a MacGyver-style assault to be able to actually make it.

And yes, there's absolutely nothing wrong with the melted-butter based Anzac biscuits, but I didn't want to go adulterating them with chocolate and brown sugar and stuff. Leave well alone I reckon, and this recipe below is a more than worthy solution.

Oatmeal Chocolate Chunk Cookies


150g butter, melted and cooled slightly, OR 3/4 cup plain oil (like Rice Bran)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 cup flour
1 cup rolled oats
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup - or as much as you like - dark chocolate, roughly chopped into chunks (I use Whittakers)

Set your oven to 180 C/375 F, and get out a couple of trays and line them with baking paper. Whisk together the butter (or oil) with the sugars and egg. Mix in the flour, baking powder, oats and chocolate. Scoop out spoonfuls of this (magically delicious) mixture and drop them onto the trays. You don't really need to flatten them out - the heat of the oven takes care of that. Bake them for 9-12 minutes, swapping the trays halfway through if you like.

Let them cool a little before eating, because burning hot chocolate on the tongue is no fun at all.



These cookies are so good, for the reasons outlined earlier (as well as the obvious - it's a chocolate chunk cookie, title speaks for itself, right?) The timer buzzer on our oven decided to join our butter conditioner and refuse to work, so these cookies were overcooked by about five minutes - this is the difference between chewy and crisp. They're still really good, but next time I make them I'm going to be paying more attention, as I lean towards a chewy preference.


It's a man with a cookie for a head!

FYI, that's a jumper of mine under that gleefully ugly plate, and it occurs to me now that hopefully I don't find any crumbs down my sleeves because that's one of my least favourite things. And yeah, I do get crumbs somehow stuck in my sleeves enough to know I don't like it (cookie crumbs hang around like sand once they get in your clothes, trust me.)

Yesterday Tim and I went to the extremely awesome Bookfair, put on by the Downtown Community Ministry who do heaps of good work in providing support to those in Wellington who need it. The Bookfair happens every year and it is so exciting. If you like books. Which I do. Tim and I scored some amazing finds this year. Like an ancient edition of Leonard Cohen's The Favourite Game, the adorable 1952 edition of This Thing Called Ballet ("makes a plea for balletosanity as against balletomania" according to Daily Sketch), and a 1953 edition of Maori Grammar and Conversation, written with the Hon. Sir Apirana Ngata. Sure I can learn phrases and grammar from it, but as a slice of New Zealand history - for better or for worse - it's a fascinating read. I also got a juicy stack of Cuisine magazines and am slowly filling the gaps in my collection from the past ten years. Feels so good.

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Title via: De La Soul with Redman, Oooh, from their album Art Official Intelligence. I loved this song right away when I first heard it ten years ago - its mellow melody, awesome beat, and more-ish chorus. I managed to more or less memorise the lyrics after taping it off the radio, but then had to go to Google because I had no idea what stuff like "Brick City" meant...
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Music lately:

Leonard Cohen's So Long, Marianne from Songs of Leonard Cohen. It's relatively lengthy at six verses, and also relatively upbeat as far as Cohen songs go. But by the time you get to the "I see you've gone and changed your name again" line, you start to feel all desolate because the song's nearly over. Devastating from the lapping strum to quiet finish.

Sleepy Man, sung by the amazing Idina Menzel in 1990, when she would have been around 19. It's a side we don't often see from her vocals, and while the lyrics to this song from The Robber Bridegroom are pretty painful I do love it, so it was a total treat to find the link to this performance - especially as she was from well before she was on Broadway.
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Next time: On the one hand, I've got all these Cuisine magazines to plough through and be inspired by, on the other hand it could be time to crack out that quince brandy I've had chilling in the cupboard...

14 comments:

  1. a) The Venn diagram of cookies had better exist. Or should be invented VERY soon. It could possibly even be made out of cookies, FTW.

    b) I love your gleefully ugly plate. It is super.

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  2. As someone who also lacks an electric mixer with which to cream butter and sugar, I give a hip hip hooray for a melted butter cookie! (Of course melted butter wins out, but I'd probably end up doing the oil what with the lactose intolerance and all. Sadness.)

    Also, LOVING that plate. Hardcore.

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  3. Hey! Apologies, this is un-oatmeal-related, but never mind. I looked up 'removing turmeric stains from clothes' and found the following...
    "If you cook Indian food, you are bound to get turmeric stains on your clothes at one time or another. The good news is they're really easy to take out. Wash the stained clothes/kitchen linen immedeately in cool water and soap. Dry in the sun and the stain will fade to a very pale pink. Wash the article again and the stain will be gone!"

    Sweet!!

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  4. Rosa: It could definitely be made out of cookies - that's my kind of mathmatics.

    Hannah: Sadness :( but yay for so many good oil-based recipes, huh? And the plate is so deserving of hardcore love :D

    Alana: No apologies! Do you know how often I spill tumeric on myself? Thanks for passing on the tip :D

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  5. Hello . Or you can heat the sugar in the oven for a while in oven proof bowl and then cream through butter ( chop it up a bit ) - heat of bowl and sugar combined does the trick (just wrap the bowl in tea towel or something so you don't burn yourself obviously) Can't remember remember where I read that but feel had some kind of pedigree.

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  6. Oh, yum! Those cookies look divine.

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  7. Thanks so much for the recipe, just made a batch, they are so YUM! So easy to make, made mine with oil, bake at 175C fan bake for 9 minutes = perfect chewy cookies!

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  8. These look so yummy. I always add oats to my chocolate chip cookies if they're around... always makes them so much more hearty and delicious!! Your "I just want butter in my life" comment made me laugh out loud... can't disagree with that.

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  9. I just want butter in my life too! lol. Good call!

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  10. Anything which doesn't require creaming butter and sugar is fine by me. I'm a melt-the-butter-and-add kinda gal! Wonderful wet weekend for cooking. (Have done lamb shanks, roast pork and vege soup so am set for meals for the rest of the week!)

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  11. YUM! I am quite partial to cookies with oats in them. I have been on the hunt for a really good oatmeal cookie recipe for a long time. It looks like I may have found it now!

    You always have such yumminess on your blog!

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  12. These babies are dangerously delicious. You rule!

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  13. Yum. One of my favorite cookies. Thanks for the reminder. Must make them now.

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  14. Oh em gee! Have just started reading your blog and came across this recipe. Best cookie recipe ever! I consider myself to be a cookie (and brownie) connoisseur and am therefore very fussy about the flavour and texture of said baked goods. These are chewy, yet crunchy, and so delicious and quick to make. This will be my go to cookie recipe from now on, thank you :)

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