The Oatmeal Cookies, a family recipe, but if you ask me for specific quantities I’ll give it to you. Food should be shared, especially cookie recipes. This is the one baking recipe I know off by heart:
butter (or margerine), softened
brown sugar
granulated sugar
eggs
vanilla
all-purpose flour
oats (quick oats actually work best for fluffier cookies, but any kind will do)
baking soda
baking powder
salt
gumdrops, dried apricots (chopped or scissored into small pieces), or shaved chocolate (doesn’t have to be a consistent size, just thin, because a little goes a long way and the chocolate shavings make the cookies look decadent and taste richer than they are. Just be careful transferring the shavings to the bowl with the dough. If you use your hands a lot of the chocolate will melt onto your warm fingers, so use a knife to transfer it. There will be more than enough chocolate left on your fingers afterward to lick off…
This recipe follows the same mixing concept as Alice Medrich’s Chocolate Cookies, but I’ve always skipped a lot of the steps. Like creaming the butter first and beating the sugars for a specific amount of time. She’s all about consistency, which I appreciate, and that’s why I’m sure she always succeeds at making incredible, complicated things like Buches de Noel, and why I grew up on inconsistent, but still delicious, cookies.
I like structure, so here’s the recipe in four big steps with a few sub-steps. Ensure to fully complete step 2:
1. Cream the butter and sugars.
Add the eggs and vanilla and beat to combine.
Lick the beaters.
2. Add the flour, oats, baking soda and baking powder
Mix with your hands
Lick your hands.
Clean your hands.
3. Shape cookies into small balls (they will spread, the chocolate cookies do not. I pressed down on them so they would become better frozen chocolate mousse cookie sandwich outer layers, but normally just leave them as balls)
Bake in 350 degree oven for 10-12 minutes.
Lick your hands.
4. Remove from oven.
Remove from tray to rack or plates.
Eat a cookie.
The most important part of this is the mixing with your hands. Not because it necessitates licking your hands, but because it means you put some feeling into the cookies. If you’ve never read “Like Water for Chocolate”, read it. Hopefully all you’ll be doing is making cookies that you can say were made with love (silly, maybe. Beneficial, yes), but mixing cookies by hand is a great way to work out all kinds of stress, aggression, and tension. Hopefully you’re the only one who eats your first batch of angry cookies. Well, you or the cause of your anger, assuming its animate. I’m not encouraging this. “Made with love” may sound a little foolish, but don’t knock hand-mixing until you try it.
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