In my humidity, it’s easier to keep granulated sugar and molasses instead of brown sugar during the summer months as the latter will become hard as bricks inside a week or two once opened. Any differences in the results are nearly imperceptible but if it’s more convenient for your pantry you can use half white and half light brown sugar here. I leave out the often used cinnamon for these classics because I think it muddles the oat flavour but a touch of vanilla never hurt anything I say. I’m lucky to have a nearby mill that offers toothy old-school oats from their water-powered mill that are the pinnacle of oat flavour. Seek out a good granary in your own local burg if possible.<\/p>\n
Make sure you take the temperature of your butter because that’s what will allow the optimal amount of air to incorporate and be held by creaming it together with the sugar. I know it sounds like one of those niggling details recipe writers shove in to sound like an expert but in this case it really is science at play.<\/p>\n
The most important step for making these memorably chewy is NOT TO OVER BAKE them. All too often people bake until they’re a lovely golden brown on top but doing so means that twenty minutes out of the oven later they’ll be oat pucks. For the perfectly bendable cookie, the edges will be firm and set, possibly even a touch of brown, but the centres will look downright under done if you pull them from the oven at the proper time. Trust that they’ll firm up on the cooling rack before the kettle whistles.<\/p>\n Stock Standard Oatmeal Cookies<\/strong><\/p>\n 100 grams dark raisins -or- any nuts you have handy (optional)* * If using neither, increase oats to 300 grams.<\/em><\/p>\n Yield: Eighteen biggish cookies<\/em><\/p>\n In a small bowl, add just enough warm water to cover the raisins and set aside to soak ten minutes. Or toast nuts briefly in a dry pan then chop them coarsely. Or dream of the beauty of plain oatmeal cookies for a minute. For even more oat-y goodness, briefly toast a third of the oats in a dry pan over medium-low heat until aromatic, about four minutes.<\/p>\n In an upright mixer with the paddle attachment fitted, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, 2-3 minutes on medium-high speed. Whisk together the molasses, eggs, and vanilla and add to the creamed butter, mixing a further minute. If this mixture is not light and fluffy, your cookies will fail so take your time here.<\/p>\n Sift together the salt, baking powder, and flour. Slowly add to the creamed butter with the machine on low speed until just incorporated, about a minute.<\/p>\n Toss the oats with the drained raisins or nuts briefly to combine. Add to the dough and ‘pulse’ the machine power a few times just until mixed. Chill for fifteen minutes while preheating the oven to 175C (350F).<\/p>\n This will make eighteen cookies baked six to a pan. You can make the whole batch in succession or with multiple trays or you can refrigerate extra dough for up to three days. You can also freeze surplus dough portions for later baking. Freeze the formed balls in a single layer until firm then move to a sealed plastic bag for up to a month. When baking from chilled or frozen, allow the dough to warm at room temperature for at least thirty minutes and up to ninety minutes beforehand and give each dough ball a slight flattening ‘smoosh’ with your palm so they bake evenly throughout. Split the dough in eighteen equal balls approximately 75 grams each – slightly larger than a golf ball. Place up to six dough balls onto a baking sheet lined with parchment or a silicone mat spaced at least two inches apart. Bake for 13-19 minutes (depending on your specific oven and how many you bake at a once) rotating the tray front to back after the first eight minutes. Remove when only the edges have browned slightly and set. The cookies will look mostly pale and underdone in the centre but trust in the cookie gods to finish them properly. Cool on the pan for five minutes then carefully move to a cooling rack with a wide spatula for at least twenty minutes where they’ll firm up nicely while you make tea.<\/p>\n More Spork Here<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A welcome rainy day here in the wilderness today and I had extra rolled oats on hand. That means cookies. Despite recent cinnamon bun evidence to the contrary, I usually prefer a ‘less-sweet’ baked something with my afternoon tea break. A simple scone or my lightly-sweetened take on oatmeal and cranberry teacake-meets-cookie for examples. However … Read More →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3348,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[322,84,89,80,508],"class_list":["post-3342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cook","tag-biscuits","tag-cookies","tag-oatmeal","tag-tea","tag-tea-time","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/northfarthing.ca\/spork\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/northfarthing.ca\/spork\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/northfarthing.ca\/spork\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/northfarthing.ca\/spork\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/northfarthing.ca\/spork\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3342"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"http:\/\/northfarthing.ca\/spork\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3361,"href":"http:\/\/northfarthing.ca\/spork\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3342\/revisions\/3361"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/northfarthing.ca\/spork\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/northfarthing.ca\/spork\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/northfarthing.ca\/spork\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/northfarthing.ca\/spork\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"old](\"http:\/\/northfarthing.ca\/spork\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/old-fashioned-oatmeal-cookies-on-rack-300x163.jpg\")
<\/a>
\n225 grams unsalted butter softened to 18C (65F)
\n360 grams white sugar
\n1 tablespoon dark molasses
\n2 large eggs from happy chickens
\n1 teaspoon vanilla extract
\n1\/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
\n1 teaspoon baking powder
\n225 grams all-purpose flour
\n250 grams old-fashioned rolled oats (avoid ‘quick-cook’ or instant versions here)<\/p>\n
\n<\/em><\/p>\n