Oat Chocolate Chip Cookies
Everyone needs a go-to chocolate chip cookie recipe. This is mine. This Oat Chocolate Chip Cookie combines the luscious butteriness of the classic grandma-style cookie with the chewy texture and nutty flavor of oats and the rich warmth of extra vanilla. While Rebecca (and the health department) may not approve, I'll also share that this dough is almost as good raw, as it is baked! Our recipe is relatively light on chocolate chips, but feel free to amp up the chocolate if you prefer. Treat yourself!
Yield: 2-3 dozen cookies
Ingredients:
- 3 cups rolled-oats
- 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 1/2 cups butter, softened
- 1 1/2 cups brown sugar
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 2 eggs
- 2 teaspoons vanilla
- 1 cup chocolate chips
Steps:
- Preheat oven to 350.
- In a food processor, combine oats, flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Pulse for 30 seconds to 1 minute, until the oats have been chopped into small flakes, and the ingredients are evenly mixed. Set aside.
- Add the butter to a stand mixer (or bowl with a hand held mixer). Beat on high for 2-3 minutes until light and fluffy. Add the sugars, and beat on high for an additional 2 minutes until creamy brown, smooth, and fluffy. Add the vanilla and eggs, and beat on high of 1-2 minutes until the mixture is smooth, satiny, and fluffy.
- Add the dry oat-flour mixture and chocolate chips to the egg-butter-sugar mixture and gently stir together by hand, using a wide spatula. You want to mix as little as possible, just bringing the ingredients together and ensuring no pockets of dry flour are left.
- Using a 1 tablespoon scoop, distribute the cookies across prepared baking sheets (use silicon baking mats, parchment paper, or lightly butter), leaving about 2 inches between each cookie to accommodate their wide spread.
- Bake the cookies for 12-15 minutes. You are looking for the cookie to be set in the middle, and just start to color on the outside edge.
Note: Extra dough can be portioned and frozen for up to 3 months, for easy baking later on, add 2 minutes to the bake time.
Paul's Honey Oat Bread
It is election weekend here in Haiti, which means comfort food is definitely in order. While elections anywhere can cause unease, unrest, and extreme emotions, in a country with few peaceful democratic precedents, a mood of wary watchfulness prevails. Back from travels and faced with an empty cupboard and blaring radio, I opted for one of my favorite comfort foods -- fresh baked Honey Oat Bread. This bread is easy to make, and the results are sublime. If you haven't made bread before, this a great place to start. Honey Oat Bread is fantastic as a sandwich base, as french toast, made into bread pudding, dolloped with fresh guava jam, or my personal favorite, smothered with honey and butter.
Blackstrap Molasses Cookies
My sister is a cookie making virtuoso and when it's her turn to host family dinner, Paul and I start perseverating about her dessert days in advance! While my sister is a cookie genius, I am the cookie klutz in the family. The problem with my often laissez-faire attitude to cookie making is that baking depends on science and precision. In a spurt of baking abandonment this past weekend, I guesstimated the amount of baking soda and "tweaked" a recipe in a few too many places...the result was a cookie-bomb that covered the baking sheet and my oven. My kitchen filled with smoke and feeling my baking-esteem slipping, I ditched the improvised-cookie plan and soothed myself with a batch of one of our foolproof favorites: Blackstrap Molasses Cookies.
There are many things to recommend these Blackstrap Molasses Cookies. They have a complex, caramel taste with a warm spiciness and satisfying soft texture. Molasses is the mineral and flavor-rich by-product spun off of sugar during processing. "Blackstrap" is the darkest most intensely flavored version of molasses, so rich in minerals and vitamins that some people take it as a dietary supplement. These cookies are a favorite in our household: soft, rich, and deeply spiced.
Dark Chocolate Pretzel Granola Bars
I have a family brimming with athletes; there are triathaloning uncles, cyclist aunts, a few who even go to iron man extremes, there are high jumping cousins, long distance winning boys and record setting girls. This weekend is the Pittsburgh Marathon, where over 30, 000 people will race through our beautiful city, up hills, over bridges and across the three rivers. Paul and I, along with our hounds, will be there to cheer on my sister as she continues the family tradition of athleticism and runs the half-marathon! In the spirit of pre-race carb loading, (and middle of the race snacking for the loyal fans), we offer you these delicious dark chocolate-pretzel granola bars. These granola bars are infinitely more delicious and healthy then their store-bought peers. I like to make a big batch of granola bars and freeze them individually wrapped. So while others race, jump, bike and swim, we will be happily cheering and snacking on these tasty bars!
Chocolate Maple Granola with Quinoa and Cranberries
This week I took a stand against the breakfast industrial complex. Sunday for breakfast, I thought I’d go carnivorous, and ate a plate heaped high with Amish summer sausage. In honor of meatless Monday, I thought I’d swing vegetarian, and polished off a bowl of leftover garlicky lentil salad with goat cheese. Tuesday at 6am, I started to worry that I might not be getting my daily serving of fruits and vegetables, and munched away on snow peas, carrots, and bell peppers while I was getting ready for work. Don’t worry, I also ate string cheese for protein! This morning I was out of time and thinking that I might want to dip towards the sweet side, unfortunately things got a bit sticky when I tried to juggle spoonful’s of Nutella while driving. Paul, no stranger to my breakfast rebellions, calmly continued eating his grape nuts. Now that I’ve gotten that all out of system, I am ready for a spiffed-up breakfast classic. So when I got home from work today, I made a big batch of Chocolate Maple Granola with Quinoa and Cranberries. This chocolaty, crunchy granola is somewhere between breakfast and dessert, a good place to be in my mind, and with the combination of nuts, oats, and quinoa, provides a complete protein rich meal that keeps me energized through the whole day.
Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies
Finding that magical overlap between the foods you crave and the ingredients you have on hand can be a challenge in the best of times. Last week, Rebecca woke up craving cookies...but with little butter or flour on hand and no fancy mix-ins to fall back on, I was stumped. Opening the fridge, I saw the jar of fresh-ground natural Haitian peanut butter we'd picked up the day before. The resulting cookies combine the nutty roasted flavor of natural peanut butter and oats with a subtle salty sweetness and rich moist texture. Success!
