Welcome to The Kitchen Club! We are baking today. My spin on classic oatmeal cookies and this recipe is easy, promise! Your subscription to The Kitchen Club helps these recipes get developed, tested, and sent out to you. Thank you!
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I have gone on a journey with these cookies. I have made eleven batches and have gotten all different results. Thick, chewy, thin, crispy…all of it. On Sunday I wrote about having two good cookies, one with a traditional cookie texture and the other super crisp. AKA cookie brittle. I was going back and forth with which recipe to send out and it was driving me insane. I decided to give in to my indecisiveness and just send BOTH recipes out. That way you guys could decide which ones to make. I ignored anything to do with the cookies all weekend planning to make a final decision and write this newsletter Monday morning. Well, the recipe just wasn’t sitting right with me, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and Monday I was back in the kitchen working on them again. There was something off, something obviously not right, and they were not exactly what I wanted them to be. I had a pit about sending them out the way they were this past weekend and now that I have done the final tenth and eleventh test (oy) I am happy with them.
The oatmeal cookie idea sprouted from the idea I had to toast oats. We toast nuts and seeds for more flavor, what would happen if we toasted grains? I threw some oats on a tray, baked them until they were golden and fragrant, and I had toasted oats. They were slightly nutty and just had a more intense oaty flavor. Now what to do with these toasted oats…
When I was a kid my grandma would make the Quaker oatmeal cookie recipe on the back of the lid regularly. We made them together countless times and I was always eating oatmeal cookies at their house. I made the Quaker recipe a few years ago to try it again, with the knowledge I have now, and I wasn’t super impressed. They were average cookies. A little thick and lacking flavor. I added oatmeal cookies to my list of things that I could improve.
Then a few months ago a recipe for Oatmeal Date Cookies popped in my inbox and I was beyond inspired. This was my signal to start working on oatmeal cookies. I toasted my oats and started experimenting. My goal was a thin and chewy cookie with deep toasty and caramel-y flavors. I also wanted this cookie to be easy for everyone to make. I love a multistep project but sometimes you just want a quick cookie.
From the beginning, my flavors were there. I added toasted pecans for texture and flavor along with the toasted oats. I tried dates but ended up dropping them because they were a little underwhelming. A little salt, cinnamon, and vanilla were added and I ended up using dark brown sugar for molasses flavor.
A quick refresh on sugar: Brown sugar is refined white sugar with molasses added. Dark brown sugar has more molasses than light brown sugar. The molasses flavor will be present, it is slightly acidic, and will add chew to your baked goods.
So although the cookie tasted great, I mean so good I was eating bites of dough over and over, the texture after being baked kept being off no matter what I did. I tried adjusting the flour, butter, and egg. I ground some oats into oat flour. I experimented with different rest times in and out of the fridge. I even switched methods completely from creaming the butter to melting it. THE LIST GOES ON. I was getting two results: cakey and thick or super thin and crispy. Listen they were both good. I ate tons of them with no complaints but something was still off. The cookies were getting too complicated with many steps and I had to go back to the drawing board.
Spoiler:
It was the baking soda. I overlooked how much I was adding, even though I tested it eight times before figuring it out, and it was too much.
You might think that adding a little extra is no big deal but the opposite is true. I am using baking soda here because the molasses from the brown sugar is acidic and activates it. When the acidic molasses meets with baking soda it actives and starts creating carbon dioxide. As the cookies bake the gas escapes and create the cookies crumb (texture). Baking soda also aids in the Maillard reaction (browning) and the overall shape of the cookie. With 120g (1c) of flour and 1t of baking soda the cookies were not spreading enough, a little too crispy, and a little too dark on the edges. With 90g (3/4c) of flour and 1t baking soda, the cookies were too thin. There wasn't enough gluten and the gas escaping was leaving air holes. This is where I ended up baking the cookies longer and creating cookie brittle. Cookie brittle is fantastic but the sugars were slightly too caramelized and riding the fine line of pleasantly bitter and burnt.
Ok, So This Is What Happened…
I reduced the baking soda significantly. This is something I overlooked when calculating the recipe. Once I started using 1/2t both results were better. The brown sugar came through with less bitter notes, the crumb of the cookie was softer, and the chew was delicate. After having a mini-meltdown, Marco begrudgingly did a “chew and spit” test for me (he’s allergic to basically every ingredient) to confirm that the texture is indeed where it needs to be. 120g (1c) of flour is what these cookies need. The cookies are an even thickness but are a thin cookie, which is just what I wanted. 12 minutes produces a chewy cookie with a crisp ring around the edge. If you take them a few more minutes you’ll get a crispier cookie.
After Marco rinsed his mouth out he turned to me and said “the flavor is amazing too.”
I love everything about these and think you guys will enjoy my Toasted Oat + Pecan Cookies too, let’s jump in…
One last note: To simplify things I toasted both the oats and pecans together for 15 minutes. The oats can really go for 20-25 minutes, maybe even 30 minutes, total. If you are up for it, put them on separate trays and toast the oats longer. Or pull the pecans off and continue toasting the oats. I think it’s worth it.
If you need a visual on browning butter, here are some GIFs.