For years my Grandma has been clipping recipes from all sorts of sources (the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Parade magazine, Relish magazine, Penzey’s magazine etc.) and sending them to me. I pull out the ones I find immediately interesting and save the ones I don’t with the idea that my tastes are always changing and maybe some day I’ll find that particular recipe interesting. I have an entire drawer in guest bedroom night stand dedicated to the recipes I find interesting. And the drawer is mega-wide. I must have hundreds of clipped magazines in that drawer organized into piles such as “cookies” or “cakes” or “pies” or “Thanksgiving.”
I have all these eggs in my fridge right now. Winco had eggs on sale (a dozen for $.99) a few weeks ago and I bought three-dozen thinking I would be eating a lot of eggs, I suppose. But I haven’t been. So I’ve been trying to think of something to knock off a few eggs here and there and cookies will usually knock off one or two if you make a standard batch. So I began sifting through my piles of recipes to look for some good-looking and easy cookie recipes. I found this one. Oatmeal cookies are not a cookie I’d normally gravitate toward but I loved the simplicity of the recipe. Plus I figured these would be cookies I could easily share with coworkers.
ingredients.
- 2 c. rolled old-fashioned oats
- 2 ½ c. flour (I used cake flour)
- 1 T. baking powder
- 1 tsp. baking soda
- 1 tsp. salt
- 2 tsp. ground cinnamon
- 1 tsp. ground nutmeg
- 1 c. (2 sticks) butter, browned, cooled
- 1 c. packed brown sugar
- ½ c. sugar
- 2 large eggs, room temperature
- 1 tsp. vanilla extract
- ½ c. butterscotch chips (optional)
- ½ c. cinnamon chips (optional)
- 2 c. powdered sugar
- 5 T. milk
directions.
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter two cookie sheets. (I used parchment paper instead…)
- Brown your butter. In a small saucepan melt butter over medium low heat until it bubbles, the bubbles subside and then browned bits begin to float to the top. Don’t remove from the heat immediately but don’t let the butter burn either. Set aside to cool.
- In a large bowl, mix oats, flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and nutmeg.
- In another large bowl, beat together the melted butter and sugars. Add eggs, one at a time and vanilla. Mix in the dry oat mixture, stirring until thoroughly combined. Add in chips, if using.
- Drop heaping tablespoons onto prepared cookie sheets. Bake in preheated oven 14 to 16 minutes, or until browned, rotating halfway through. Let cookies rest on the baking sheets 5 minutes before moving to a wire rack to cool completely.
- Once cookies are completely cooled, whisk together the powdered sugar and milk until smooth. Generously frost each cookie.
So here’s what I changed about the recipe. The recipe called for melted butter so I decided to brown the butter. I always feel like browning the butter in any recipe that calls for melted butter makes the recipe that much butter. I added salt and vanilla because both ingredients seemed inconspicuously missing. I also believe every recipe should have call for salt in some capacity. I also decided to add some butterscotch and cinnamon chips because … I like the idea of a cookie containing some sort of “chip” as opposed to not.
I decided I was glad that I added the salt because you frost the cookies with a glaze. There’s so much sugary sweetness in the glaze (and the cookie!) you need the added salt to contrast. I probably would have added a touch more flour to these cookies to get them a bit thicker were I to make them again. Normally I never put the exact amount of flour into a cookie per the recipe directions. I always, always add additional flour until I get the consistency of dough that I like (slightly stiff, not sticky). Not sure why I didn’t this time, but I didn’t. The cookies flattened a wee bit more than I would have liked but they aren’t pancake-thin (or crepe-thin, rather) so I wasn’t totally annoyed.
Recipe rating:
Food Snob 