Sunday, December 16, 2007

Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

Last time I blogged about making cookies and forgetting the key ingredient of baking powder until the very last minute. Surprisingly, they came out pretty good. Baking a pumpkin pie today, I realized as I was pouring the batter into the pie crust that I forgot to add salt. Luckily I was also able to incorporate that in at the last minute, but we'll see how it tastes.

Here's the recipe that I used for oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. I got it off of the back of the Safeway brand Quick Oats. I cut it in half.

2 sticks of butter (.5 lb)
1.5 cups brown sugar, packed
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs
2 cups Quick Oats
1.5 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
.5 tsp ground nutmeg
.5 tsp salt
1 cup chocolate chips, raisins or chopped nuts

Place racks in upper third of oven and preheat oven to 350. In a large bowl with electric mixer, beat butter, brown sugar, and vanilla until light and fluffy, about 1minute.Add eggs and mix until thoroughly incorporated. Add oats, flour, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt. Mix on low speed until blended. Add chocolate chips, raisins or nuts, and blend on medium speed until incorporated. Drop batter by tablespoons 1.5 in. apart onto greased baking sheets. Bake for 10 to 13 minutes or until golden brown. Cookies will feel soft but will firm up as they cool. Let stand on baking sheets for 2 minutes before transferring to racks to cool. Makes about 45 cookies. Recipe developed by cookbook author Marlene Sorosky Gray.

Thursday, December 06, 2007

I should really just stick with plain ol' cooking

Its no secret that I like to cook. I enjoy reading recipes, and I enjoy following a recipe to make a really delicious meal. However, I've come to the sad conclusion that I should not be baking, specifically cookies. Oh, sure, I can throw a brownie mix together, or even use the Cake Mix Doctor to pretty up a vanilla cake. But cookies, well let's just say that they require a level of sophisticated recipe reading that apparently I can't master. I keep forgetting to add something rather important, usually baking powder. As a result, my cookies end up to be a chewy, gooey, slightly undercooked, yet delicious mess. Of course they're delicious--they're pretty much sugar and butter (definitely the way to a Matt's heart). But they look awful, and I'm usually too ashamed to share them with the people I was planning to share them with.

For those of you who may not cook or bake, baking requires a certain amount of precision that cooking doesn't necessarily need. With cooking, you can be all like, you know what this needs more of? Garlic! And chop up a bit more garlic, and throw some salt in there, and maybe even if you're crazy about garlic and salt like I am, add some garlic salt. But with baking, if its says 1 tsp of salt, then you really better follow the directions, and not add more or less, because let me tell you, you will know.

Tonight I made oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, and what did I realize that I forgot to add to mix as I was putting it on a cookie sheet? Baking powder, of course. I quickly added all my cookie balls make to the bowl, threw some baking powder in there, and just prayed that it wouldn't turn out too terrible. Actually, they really didn't. I mean, they're a little undercooked on the inside, but nothing too bad. Its not like anybody but Matt and myself are planning on eating a dozen and half cookies. Oops, I mean, 16 cookies. Yeah. 16.