Thursday: Aunt Mabel's Killer Oatmeal Cookies

Apparently I have an Aunt Mabel and she makes a mean oatmeal chocolate chip cookie. The recipe has been modified over the years by my mother and lastly by me, but it is a really nice crisp cookie with lots of chocolate.

You will need:

2 2/3 c rolled oats
3/4 c butter, softened
1 1/4 c brown sugar
1 egg
2 tsp vanilla
2 Tbsp water (?? that's a first for me, but I did it!)
1 c whole grain whole wheat flour
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
3/4 c chocolate chips
3/4 c pecans, chopped

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and spread the oats on a baking sheet. When the oven is up to temp, bake the oats for 20 minutes, stirring halfway through. I know I always say that roasting nuts and the like makes them taste better, but for reals, you will want to do this. Adds another dimension. Set them aside to cool and get to creaming!

Rolled oats

Multi-dimensional oats!

Cream the butter and sugar together, add in the egg, vanilla and water (?? so strange! kept wanting to switch it out with another egg, but I stuck, sorta, to the recipe), beat until combined.

Mix the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg together, add slowly to the butter mixture on low speed. Take a minute and scrape up the flour that landed on the counter. We'll wait.

Add in the oats, mix as well as you can. Add in the pecans if your mixer isn't getting grouchy with you. If it is, just stir them in with a spatula, which is what you want to do with the chocolate chips. Mix it allll together.

Drop by spoonful onto parchment paper, bake for 12-15 minutes until the bottoms are lightly browned. Remove from tray immediately, cool on a rack.

This made 4 dozen cookies, at calories 103 per. Relatively healthy, though! Whole grains, whole wheat flour, it's all good!

Enjoy!

Chocolate Oat Sandwich Cookies: SHV

It's been a couple of rainy days, so now that I've baked a bunch and stocked up on bread, I thought I would make something chocolate-y. These cookies are different from most of the ones I make; for one thing the shortening makes them super flaky and they don't have chocolate chips. A cookie without chocolate chips in some form or another? What FOR?? However, they are one of my mom's favourites and they are nice to give oot.

I didn't intend to make these healthier, but ran out of all-purpose flour. I know, what??? I have several tens of pounds of flour in my pantry at any given point; turns out it was all  whole wheat or whole wheat whole grain or bread flour. So here they are with mostly whole wheat flour and a close eye on the fat. I am not always going to be making reduced-calorie versions of things, I firmly believe that some things should be made as they were intended, and eaten in teeny tiny amounts and truly enjoyed. These cookies are not those and so can take a bit of adjustment. Enjoy!

You will need:

1/4 c butter, softened
1/4 c shortening (I've also used lard, but I would not recommend golden shortening)
3 Tbsp sugar
2/3 c whole wheat or all-purpose flour (I used 1/4 c ap, then the rest ww)
1/2 c rolled oats (not quick, unless that's all you have)
1 Tbsp unsweetened cocoa
2 Tbsp butter, softened
1 Tbsp cocoa
1/3 c icing sugar

 

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, line a baking sheet with parchment paper (you will really really want to do this, these suckers stick) and get out a stand mixer.

Beat the butter, shortening and sugar all together until lightened and fluffy.

Add in the flour slowly, then the cocoa and oats.

Roll into 12 balls and place on your prepared cookie sheet.

Flatten the balls with a spoon as shown, or with a wet fork. A clean wet fork, mind.

Bake for 20 minutes or until just starting to brown on the bottom. Place the whole cookie sheet on a rack to cool; these can be crumbly and this helps them stay together.

Start your icing! Cream your butter, gradually add in the cocoa and icing sugar. You can either put the filling in a tube and pipe it out, or just use a knife / spatula. Whatever works best for you. You just want to make sure your icing is spreadable without being gooey. Add a tiny bit of milk if you find it is too stiff.

Spread some on a cookie, top with another. It's that simple! This recipe makes 6 sandwich (double) cookies at 324 per, which seems SO HIGH! I will be eating half of one tonight, and then the other half tomorrow, and then I think I will give them to my neighbor's husband to see if he wants to take them into work.

Chocolate CHOCOLATE Chip Cookies

I don't mess with my usual chocolate chip cookie much (gets the hubby het up) but I wanted to try this recipe because it has 70% cocoa in it, and apparently that is healthy. I should be in top form after a couple of dozen! It is also all brown sugar, so I am expecting a rich, moist cookie.

You will need:

1/2 c butter, softened
1/2 c shortening
1 1/2 c brown sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
4 oz semi-sweet chocolate, melted and cooled (chips or squares)
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
2 1/2 c all purpose flour
6 oz dark chocolate - 70%
6 oz semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 c pecans, toasted and chopped

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and line your cookie sheets with parchment paper. I like to do all my prep first, and chop the dark chocolate on a flexible cutting board to maximize yield and improve the odds of all the chocolate getting into a mouth and not washed down the drain. I am using two types of dark chocolate, 50 percent chips and a bar of 70 percent.

Was a Lindt bar, now just flakes

Mix the butter and shortening together in a stand mixer bowl for 30 seconds.

About to...

White and yellow, white and yellow

Add the brown sugar, baking soda, salt and cinnamon, mix until combined. You will need to scrape. Add in the melted chocolate (room temp!), eggs and vanilla.

Add in the flour at the lowest speed available, I am using "stir" and just barely got it all in. It's a stiff batter.

As in a "spatula sticks straight up in it" stiff

Stir in the rest of the chocolate pieces, scoop onto your cookie sheets and bake for 8-9 minutes. Let those babies sit on the cookie sheet for 2 minutes before you put them on a wire rack to fully cool. This is a high-yield recipe, about 6 dozen, so you will want to do two sheets at a time, rotating front to back AND up to down at the halfway mark.

Raw

Enjoy!

Baked!

Turned out to be very moist and rich. Expectations met.

Everything Cookies

These cookies have just about anything you could ever imagine in a cookie, and is a good way to clear out a pantry. It is also a fun cookie to make with little hands. Something for everyone!

You will need:

1/2 c shortening
1/2 c butter, softened
3/4 c granulated sugar
3/4 c brown sugar, packed
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/3 c all purpose flour
1/3 c cocoa powder
2 1/2 c rolled oats (not quick)
1 c semisweet chocolate chips
1 c white or peanut butter chips*
1 c macadamia nuts, lightly TOASTED and chopped

Okay, there are a lot of ingredients, but hang in there! Good cookie

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees, line all your cookie sheets with parchment paper. I reuse my parchment paper, because I use so much of it and I am cheap like that. Before you do anything else, let`s toast the macadamia nuts. These nuts are hella expensive and hard to find (Safeway does a small 100g bag, get two), let`s make sure they taste their very best. Spread them on a parchment-covered cookie sheet, bake for 10-15 minutes at 350, stirring every five minutes and removing JUST as soon as you smell them. Right then! Faster, soldier! Off the sheet and into a bowl to await chopping. When they are cool, chop. I find chopping nuts on a flexible plastic cutting board maximizes yield.

Plain old regular macadamia nuts

Amazing toasted macadamia nuts!

Mix the shortening and butter in a stand mixer for 30 seconds, then add in the sugars, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

Combined fats

If you can find a helper to work the bowl, it's even better

Add the eggs and vanilla, then the flour and cocoa powder slowwwly. Add in as much of the oats as you can. Note: these are rolled, or "slow" oats, not quick oats. As you were. Stir in the chocolate pieces and chopped nuts. *A quick note about the chocolate chip choices: I don't like white chocolate (it's not chocolate!) but I find they work really well in this recipe. Something about their over-sweetness balances out the richness well. In this case I used a couple of different types, white and a little bit of butterscotch as well as the semi-sweet.

Looks like rocky road something

Nom nom nom

You can make huge cookies or you can make small cookies. I prefer to use my second-smallest scoop and do 12 to a sheet. They don't spread much.

If you have a helper, a good thing for them to do is gently squish them flat

Bake for 10 to 14 minutes and then let sit on the sheet for a minute before offloading them to a wire rack. I couldn't go a second over 10 minutes in my smoking hot ovens.

Far!

Near!

Enjoy!

Peanut Butter Cookies

Peanut butter is the basis of some of my very favourite cookies; you add chocolate and it's game on, baby. Here are a couple of the most popular ones:

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip

You will need:

1 c peanut butter (probably not natural, sorry Mom)

1/2 c granulated sugar

1/2 c packed (always dark) brown sugar

1 tsp baking soda

1 egg

1/2 tsp vanilla

1/4 c all purpose flour

1 c semisweet chocolate chips

That's all!

I've often been tempted to double this recipe, but the sheer volume of peanut butter has dissuaded me. The other thing is that these cookies have to be rolled or scooped, so that's a lot of sticky peanut butter balls. 

Preheat your oven to 325 degrees and cover your cookie sheets with parchment paper. 

Beat peanut butter, both sugars and the baking soda until combined. I am going to comment here although I know I am probably the only one that is bugged by this. There is no salt in the original recipe. Typically, you would have the salt to react with your baking soda, so I have actually added 1/4 teaspoon. Another thing is that you would not usually add ingredients in this order, so I again tried everything in a more traditional way, as in flour mixed with soda and salt, all wet together, almost like a muffin method. I didn't find either method made a huge difference, so do whatever feels natural! 

Beat in the eggs and vanilla until combined. Stir in the flour and chocolate chips with a wooden spoon. Here comes the messy part. Shape the dough into balls, about an inch or so across. If you have a cookie scoop, use it, for the love of Bob. If the dough is over-beaten, the peanut butter can make this a super greasy and crumbly cookie to try to get on a sheet. Scoop twelve per sheet, they don't really spread much.

I ran right past the chance to photograph the raw ones, weird!

Closer...

Bake for 9-10 minutes, until the cookies are puffed and just a little brown. This is one cookie you will want to let cool on the sheet for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack, instead of immediately de-sheeting it after baking. 

Mine!!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup Cookies

You will need:

1/2 c butter, softened

1/2 c peanut butter

1/2 c packed brown sugar

1/4 c granulated sugar

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1 egg

1/4 c milk

1 tsp vanilla

2 c all purpose unbleached flour

3/4 c semisweet chocolate chips

3/4 c honey-roasted peanuts

3/4 c peanut butter cups, chopped (freeze for 15 minutes first, makes them easier to chop)

All of this

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line your cookie sheets with parchment paper.

In your stand mixer, beat the butter and peanut butter together until smooth.

Then add in the sugars, baking soda and salt. Hey! Maybe it's a peanut butter thing! Doesn't explain the salt, though, hmm...Beat until it is combined, then add in the egg, milk and vanilla. Add as much of the flour as you can, although this will be tough going for your mixer.

Better the mixer than my arm!

Stir in the chocolate chips, peanuts and pb cups. Scoop 12 cookies to a sheet; giving them lots of room to spread. 

Bake for 9-10 minutes, looking for a light browning only. These babies can come right off the sheets from the oven and onto wire racks to cool.

Closer...

So awesome

I know what you are probably thinking: these cookies look practically identical! And they are, except that one has nuts and peanut butter cups and the other one is the best peanut butter chocolate chips cookies you will ever have in your whole life. I'll leave you to decide which is which.