I couldn’t stay away. I know, right? Two posts, in less than two weeks. I’d better pace myself. It’s just that our good friends Chris and Jodi were having a little soiree to say goodbye to the summer and give Chris a nice send-off before he joins me in the black hole of law school. So, you know, I had to make some sweets to mark the occasion.
My first thought was to do some type of cookie, either of the drop or bar variety, but what kind? I pored through my baking cookbooks, hoping that something would pop out at me, but nothing did. Fig and pecan hermit bar cookies? Peanut butter chocolate chip drop cookies? Oatmeal cookies? They all sounded delectable, but I couldn’t decide. I asked Kenan what he thought, and he suggested that I go with some spiced oatmeal cookies from chocolate bar. That sounded nice, but as usual, I ignored the feeling that I should just trust Kenan, so I wrote Jodi giving her some options and asking for a second opinion. Unsurprisingly, she and Chris both liked the chocolate bar option best, so I went with those guys.
I realized, after deciding to go with these oatmeal suckers, that they were not dissimilar to some other cookies I’d made, long ago. But after giving the ingredient list a once-over, I determined that they were different (and delicious-looking!) enough to warrant a go-ahead. That being decided, I got down to bidness.
oatmeal niceties
On the day of the party, I wrangled my ingredients together and stood, once again, in the kitchen, ready to do baking battle. I did my mise en place and then got to it. I sifted the dry ingredients together; I creamed butter and sugars dark brown and granulated until smooth, then added the eggs and vanilla. I mixed in the dry ingredients, then the oats and chocolate, and stuck the whole lot in the refrigerator to chill out.
But here’s the thing: the recipe says to chill the dough for six hours. Six! I was not expecting that. You see, I’m not the best at reading the recipe all the way through before I get started (read: I never do it because it’s deeply boring and I’m very impatient). As such, I didn’t leave myself enough time to do all that chilling. So what I did was stick the dough in the freezer for about 30 minutes, to get things nice and cool really fast. Then I moved it to the refrigerator so the dough didn’t get completely frozen and hard to deal with. At any rate, once the dough was sufficiently cool and firm, I heated my oven to 350 degrees. I got some baking sheets out and dropped the dough onto the sheets in little balls. I stuck the baking sheets in the refrigerator to offset the timing mishap, and then, once the oven was hot enough, I stuck the sheets in the oven.
The cookies came out perfectly, if I do say so myself, even despite my failure to follow the directions exactly. They were just slightly crispy on the outside, golden brown on the bottom, and gooey with chocolate on the inside. And they were a huge hit at the party. Unfortunately, you’ll have to take my word that people liked them, because we forgot to get any shots of people actually eating the cookies. But I’m sure you can imagine: a bunch of folks in a Brooklyn apartment, talking, laughing, and eating cookies (and other things, too, of course, but none as exciting as cookies). It’s a good image, no?
spiced oatmeal-chocolate chip cookies.
