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Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Madhuram — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 11:58:43 +0000

It’s Christmas season or cookie season to be more apt. I wanted to bake some cookies for my son’s teachers. I bought Wilton’s cookie sheet (large one) from Michael’s. The sheet came with 2 festive cookie recipes. One for chocolate chunk cookies and another one for thumbprint cookies. I would rather call the chocolate chunk cookie recipe as oatmeal chocolate chip cookies because it has a good quantity of oatmeal. I decided to try that recipe for the teachers because it made a huge batch and anything with chocolate chips and walnuts has to be definitely tasty.

After trying these oatmeal chocolate chip cookies I came to one conclusion that Ener-G egg replacer works best in cookie recipes and especially chocolate chip cookies. So if you have never used Ener-G before but want to use it, start with cookie recipes. Simply substitute EnerG according to the instructions given in the pack, for the eggs mentioned in the recipe and that’s all you have to do and the cookies turn out perfect. My two cents is to use lukewarm water and also use a blender to blend together the powder and water instead of just whisking it with a fork. Using a blender makes the mixture very frothy and in turn gives desired results. So in this recipe too, I didn’t think twice before substituting Ener-G for the 2 eggs in the recipe. The cookies came out perfect as I expected.

Recipe

Ingredients:

Rolled Oats/Quick Cooking Oats 2 and 1/2 cups

All Purpose Flour 2 cups

Baking Powder 1 teaspoon

Baking Soda 1 teaspoon

Salt 1/2 teaspoon

Unsalted Butter 1 cup

Granulated Sugar 1 cup

Brown Sugar, packed (I used light) 1 cup

Ener-G Egg Replacer Powder 4 teaspoons

Warm Water 7 tablespoons

Vanilla Extract 1 teaspoon

Semisweet Chocolate Chips 1 an 1/2 cups

Walnuts, coarsely chopped 1 and 1/2 cups

Yield: 4 dozen (48 cookies)

Procedure:

1 Process the oats in a food processor/blender. The texture of the powdered oats was not mentioned
in the original recipe, so I chose a consistency in between coarse and fine.

2 In a medium size bowl combine together the powdered oats, flour, baking powder, soda and salt; mix well.

3 In a blender, blend together the EnerG powder and warm water until it’s frothy; set aside.

4 In another large mixing bowl, cream together the butter and sugars with an electric mixer until light and fluff. Beat in the EnerG mixture and vanilla.

5 Add the flour mix to the sugar mixture; mix well. Stir in the chocolate chips and walnuts.

6 Cover the bowl with a plastic wrap and chill the dough at least for an hour.

7 Around the 45th minute, start preheating the oven to 350F/175C for 15 minutes.

8 Scoop out heaping tablespoons of cookie dough; drop it on ungreased cookie sheet 2 inches apart. Bake on middle rack for 10-12 minutes or until lightly browned. For crisper cookies, I would suggest flattening the dough instead of just dropping them. The scooped out dough doesn’t spread much, so it’s very chewy in the middle. In that case I think the baking time will also reduce by a minute or two. I used an aluminum pan, so mine took about 13 minutes. The baking time will vary if you are using a dark coating non stick cooking pan. Be sure to check it earlier. I used to 2 cookie sheets at a time. So I shifted the pan from the middle layer to the bottom layer and vice-versa after 6 minutes.

9 Remove the baking sheets from the oven and place it on wire racks. Let the cookies stand for 5 minutes because the cookies will continue to bake. After 5 minutes, transfer the cookies to the cooling racks directly using a spatula and let it cool completely before storing it in an airtight container.

Taste These oatmeal chocolate chip cookies tasted very good, crispy on the edges and chewy in the middle. I guess the cookies would have been more crisp had I flattened the dough.

My Notes1 I think the next time when I make it I would reduce the quantity of chocolate chips to 1 cup and also substitute the all purpose flour with whole wheat pastry flour.

2 The 2 and 1/2 cups of oats when powdered measured to 2 cups. So I think we could also use 2 cups of oat flour instead.

Oatmeal Coconut Cookies

Madhuram — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 13:00:46 +0000

Last week my husband suddenly had cravings for coconut cookies. He picked one pack from the store, but I put it back in the shelf because if he does not like it, he will not touch it and I have to finish it. Moreover I try as much as possible to avoid buying baked goods for health reasons and also I don’t want to miss a chance to bake. So as soon as I came home, dug out my Cookies book and started searching for coconut cookie recipes. That book has 1001 cookie recipes (published by Readers Digest) and there were a lot of types of coconut cookies and I narrowed down to this one because it was simple to bake, used little butter when compared to the other recipes and also it included oats. As usual my husband did not relish these cookies immediately but started liking it very much after a couple of days when it was almost over and started asking for more.

Ingredients

All Purpose Flour 1 cup

Baking Soda 1/2 teaspoon

Salt 1/8 teaspoon

Shredded Coconut (I used sweetened) 1 cup

Quick Cooking Oats (I used large flake) 1 cup

Butter 1/2 cup

Granulated Sugar 3/4 cup

Honey 2 tablespoons

Yield: 21 cookies

Procedure1 Preheat the oven to 350F. Butter two cookie sheets. I used one extra large cookie sheet I recently purchased from Walmart. It was a dark coated non stick pan. Usually cookies baked on such dark coated sheets turn brown very quickly, so I lined it with parchment paper and then greased it with cooking spray.

2 In a large bowl sift together the flour, baking soda and salt. Stir in the coconut and oats.

3 Melt the butter with the sugar and honey in a small saucepan over medium heat. Remove it from the stove and let it cool for 2 minutes.

4 Pour the melted butter mixture to the dry ingredients and mix well with a spatula.

5 Roll into balls the size of walnuts and place 1 inch apart on the baking sheet and flatten it slightly with a fork.

6 Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until golden brown. If using 2 cookie sheets, shift racks halfway through the baking to ensure even browning. Mine turned golden brown after 13 minutes itself. I think it’s because of the dark coated cookie sheet.

7 Let the cookies cool on the sheets until they firm slightly. Then using a spatula carefully lift the cookies and transfer it to a cooling rack to cool completely.

Taste These coconut cookies were very sweet. Initially it was crisp around the edges and chewy in the center. After 2-3 days, it started getting soft around the edges too. It also smells very buttery when consumed immediately. We did like the taste and I will make it again but will definitely do something to reduce the sweetness. My son liked it very much, but my husband did not like it in the beginning. He started liking it after 4 days when it was more chewy.

My Notes1 The recipe did not mention whether to use sweetened or unsweetened coconut. I had the sweetened one, so I used it. I think if I had used the unsweetened variety the sweetness of the cookies would have been perfect for us.

2 Light corn syrup was mentioned in the recipe. I had that in hand, but I anticipated that some of you might ask what can be substituted for it. So I used honey. I think either omitting this or reducing the quantity of sugar to 1/2 cup will also work if you want less sweeter cookies.

3 These coconut cookies spread a lot, so be sure to leave enough space while placing the dough on the baking sheets.

These oatmeal coconut cookies go to my Wholegrain Baking Event – Oats.

Pear Oat Bran Muffins

Madhuram — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 18:58:38 +0000

Recently I borrowed “The 250 Best Muffin Recipes” by Esther Brod from the local library. I don’t know if they are the best muffin recipes unless I try each recipe but the variety is really very good though. Actually it has bonus 250 recipes, so totally 500 muffin recipes in one book, with a lot of healthy recipes too. I was amazed by the collection of recipes using oatmeal, oat bran, wheat bran, whole wheat flour and wheat germ. It should easily reach at least 100-150 recipes. Especially there are a lot of oatmeal and oat bran muffins recipes. Since this month’s Whole Grain Baking theme is Oats, I decided to proceed with the Apple Walnut Oat Bran Muffins. (Please note that Oat bran alone is not whole grain, but for this event I’m accepting recipes with oat bran also). I had some bland pears in the fridge and nobody was willing to eat it so decided to use it instead of apple (more about this in the Taste and My Notes section). I have also used apple cider vinegar instead of the egg whites mentioned in the original recipe.

Ingredients

Whole Wheat Pastry Flour 2 cups

Oat Bran 1 cup

Baking Powder 1 tablespoon

Baking Soda 1 and 1/2 teaspoon

Cinnamon 1/8 teaspoon

Walnuts, chopped 1 cup

Pear or Apple, unpeeled, grated 1 cup

Brown Sugar, packed (I used light brown) 1/2 cup

Buttermilk 1 and 1/2 cups

Water 1/4 cup

Apple Cider Vinegar 1 tablespoon

Vanilla Extract 1 teaspoon

Vegetable Oil 5 tablespoons

Quick cooking Oats little, to top

Yield: 12 muffins

Procedure1 Preheat oven to 400F/200C. Grease a muffin tin or use paper liners.

2 In a large bowl combine together all the dry ingredients (from whole wheat flour to grated pear).

3 In a measuring mug, measure the buttermilk. Add 1/4 cup water, vinegar, vanilla extract and oil. Whisk together. Dissolve the brown sugar in this liquid mixture and blend it well with a fork.

4 Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, stirring just until moistened. Do not over mix.

5 Fill the batter in each muffin cup to the top. Sprinkle a teaspoon of oatmeal on each cup.

6 Bake for 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle of the muffin comes out clean. Mine was done in 16 minutes.

7 Leave it in the pan for 10-15 minutes. Then transfer it to a cooling rack.

Taste I couldn’t wait for more than an hour to taste the muffins. I was expecting some sort of raw taste/smell from the whole wheat pastry flour and the oat bran. Surprise! it didn’t taste weird at all. In fact the muffins had a very good texture. The only thing missing was sweetness. It was very mild. I used a pear which was not sweet by itself, maybe that was the reason. But we liked it because we generally don’t eat very sweet stuff and my husband told me that these were the best muffins I have ever baked. My son who has a sweet tooth enjoyed these oat bran muffins very much.

These muffins were very filling too. Unlike the empty calories-sugary muffins, I did not feel like reaching for another one. So these muffins don’t disappear fast and I stored it in the fridge. It becomes little hard if stored in the fridge. So heat it in the microwave oven for 30-35 seconds before eating it and it’s moist again like freshly baked.

My Notes1 Taste the fruit you are going to use, whether it is apple or pear. The pear I used was very bland, that’s why I wanted to use it up because no one wanted to eat it. I should have anticipated that the muffins will also not be sweet enough. So add another 1/4 cup of sugar if the fruit you are using is not sweet.

2 The original recipe used 1 cup of all purpose flour and 1 cup of whole wheat flour. So if you don’t have whole wheat pastry flour go with this blend.

3 If you are a cinnamon fan use 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon and omit the vanilla extract (as per the original recipe).

4 The recipe clearly asked to fill the batter to the top of the cup. I was not sure about this because usually muffin recipes mention 2/3rds full. I thought that it would overflow while baking and the muffins will get stuck to each other. Except for 4 muffins I did not fill it to the top. So I got 12 regular size muffins and had some batter left which was enough for 6 mini muffins. The 4 muffins which I had filled to the top rose beautifully and it did not stick to the other muffins. So if you fill the entire cup there should not be any batter left and the given measurement should yield exactly 12 regular size muffins.

If baking as mini muffins 8-10 minutes should be enough. I baked mine for 10 minutes and it was already very dark in the bottom.

These oat bran muffins go to Wholegrain (Eggless) Baking Event – Oats hosted by me.