What do you get when you’ve got PMS, a full bag of leftover rolled oats, and a bag of Ghiradelli chocolate chips? Why Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies, of course!
Chocolatey Oaty Goodness
I used the same recipe (from Baking Illustrated) for these as I used for the Loaded Oatmeal Cookies from last week — with a few obvious and not-so-obvious changes. For one, I used 1-1/2 cups chocolate chips, rather than the nuts, fruits, and veggies that went into the other cookies. I also omited the nutmeg, as suggested by BI. The next time I make them I will probably put the nutmeg back in because I just like the way the nutmeg enhances the flavor of the oats, and I think it might make a more complex, flavorful cookie. As they turned out, I thought these were good — but more like extra filling, extra chewy chocolate chip cookies. I felt like the flavor of the oats took a backseat to the chocolate, and I wonder if just that little bit of extra spice might create some more balance.
One cookie tray went splat: light butter or oven placement?
Less obvious: The recipe calls for 2 sticks of butter, and I wanted to see what would happen if I tried to “lighten” up the recipe. So, I used 1 stick of regular, unsalted butter and one stick of light butter. The light butter was salted, so I also decreased the amount of salt I added into the cookies by about 1/2. This was my first time using light butter, and I was surprised by how different it is in texture. When I tried to soften the butters in my microwave before creaming them, the light butter melted completely while the regular butter merely softened up a bit. I’m not sure how much this difference affected the final product. Taste-wise, I don’t think they were any different.
Some of the cookies were more crumbly than my last batch of oatmeal cookies, but I think that may have had more to do with oven placement than anything else. It seems like the cookies that start out on the middle oven rack — further from the heat source — spread and flatten rather than puffing into a voluptuous, full-figured cookie. I had a very similar problem last time.
I do think all of the cookies, regardless of their flatness or fullness, got very crumbly after a few days (one person called them “trail mix cookies”), and I wonder if this has something to do with the different fat. Maybe next time I will experiment with using light butter exclusively. We’ll see.
i am hereby requesting mail-order oatmeal cookies of any kind. i like carrots and chocolate chips. please no other fruit and definitely not raisins. this writer has been craving oatmeal cookies and can’t stand up in the kitchen long enough to make her own!