Chocolate Chip Oaties

If you still remember it, a couple of months ago, I made Chewy Golden Cookies, which were basically oat cookies (with a LOT of sugar). Looking through my aunt's cookbooks here in London, I came across this particular recipe. Its like a chocolate chip cookie, only it has some oats mixed into the dough. This, apparently, gives it a "light texture and nutty flavour" to the cookies. Sounds nice enough. Poking around the cupboards, it looked like they had all the ingredients! So here we go!

What you need:
115g butter, softened, plus extra for greasing
115g light muscovado sugar
1 egg
100g porridge oats
1 tablespoon milk
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
125g plain flour
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
175g plain chocolate, broken into pieces
175g milk chocolate, broken into pieces

Note: I used 200g plain chocolate chips and 200g white chocolate, broken into pieces. You can also replace half of the chocolate with chopped nuts - pecan nuts were suggested.

What you do:

1. Preheat the oven to 180C. Grease some baking sheets. (Not necassary, if you're using non-stick ones, or baking paper)
   
2. Place the butter and sugar in a bowl and beat together until light and fluffy.
3. Beat in the egg, then add the oats, milk and vanilla essence. Beat together until well-blended.
4. Sift the flour and cocoa and baking powders into the mixture and stir.
5. Stir in the chocolate pieces.
6. Place dessertspoonfuls of the mixture on the prepared baking sheets and flatten slightly with a fork.
7. Bake in the preheated oven for 15 minutes, or until slightly risen and firm.
8. Cool on the baking sheets for 2 minutes (to ensure that they do not fall apart), then transfer to wire racks to cool completely.

A gorgeous picture for a gorgeous cookie, don't you think? ;) I "accidentally" used more chocolate than was required, so the cookies were absolutely loaded with chocolate! Super yummy! But don't worry... they have oats. *cough* should be "healthy", right? :P

Because of the oats, the cookies had some shape and structure to them, unlike my usual cookie, which is flat. I like lumpy cookies better, actually, and have been trying to figure out how to make them hold their shape, instead of flattening. Some tips I got was either to bake them cold, or to use margarine/shortening instead of butter. The cold tip didn't work. I haven't tried the margarine/shortening thing, though it might work, since they don't melt as easily as butter. But I don't really want to sacrifice the taste, just to make the cookies lumpy. Ah well...

But anyway, my point in all that rambling was that it seems like oats can work quite well to keep the cookie lumpy, hehe. Of course, it adds a slight flavour, but in this case, you barely taste the oats. They were just nice. :) One thing that *was* affected though, was the texture. These cookies were kind of soft, almost cakey, except for the ends which were crunchier. I like my cookies chewy, instead of cakey, so this was not all that desirable. I absolutely loved the cookie edges though, hehe. :D

But it looks like all the others (namely, my cousins...) didn't mind at all. They were gobbling down the cookies one after another as soon as they came out of the oven, until I had to keep the next few batches away from them, so that they wouldn't spoil their appetite for dinner (or get fat either, for that matter :P ). Nevertheless, I got about 35 cookies from this (I used a tablespoon, instead of a dessertspoon. Otherwise, you should get about 20) and by the end of the day, only about 5 were left. This was gone by early the next morning (which was today).

So... all in all, looks like this was a success. Even my cousins, who get abundant amounts of store-bought cookies and treats seemed to like it. Must be good, right? ;)

Quote of the day: One day when he was eating a cookie he offered me a bite. Don't underestimate that. The poor guy's so frightened of germs, it could darn near have been a proposal.