Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Peanut Butter, Oat and Chocolate Cookies

 
















God, it’s been a while. In fact, so long that people have been stabbing me in an effort to motivate me to update. Figuratively, mind you. But it makes my writers soul bleed! The soul that I so desperately wanted to exist when I was a teenager, and am not so sure really does, these days. I thought I would write the most inspiring prose... the most innovative stories... Whoa, okay. Tangent, anyone? I’m sorry about that – but tangents are great fun. I like to tangent...alise? Tangentify? Tangentilate? Personally, I like that third one the most. It’s kind of titillating and serious at the same time. ... And yes, I do realise I just went off on a tangent about tangents. 

Staying on topic! I do actually have recipes to update with. Just actually doing the updating bit is the hard part. The uploading and resizing of pictures, the hunting and organising of my haphazard thoughts, and then collating them in some manner that is understandable. These are seriously difficult things, people. I think I might take a nap, in fact. 

But actually, you really do need to know about these peanut butter, chocolate and oat cookies. Oats you say? Why are these healthy things in my cookies? Usually this is my opinion too. If I’m eating cookies, I’m not going to muck around adding things like oats to make myself feel better about all the calories I’m consuming. I’m a purist. Keeper of the secrets. Traditionalist. Except when I’m not. Anyway, these cookies have oats in them, and they should stay there. They counter the sweet and salty and richness and it is good. 

I made these for the first time a few weeks ago and promptly burnt the first half of the batch. So keep an eye on them, they cook quickly. My second – and tripled mix – effort was much more successful and delicious. I was visiting a friend in Auckland, and apparently even when I travel to the other end of the country, I deign it necessary to take baking with me. Even when she and the others I’m visiting don’t. It’s rather ridiculous, especially when I’m visiting very skilled bakers in their own right. I’m calling it bizarre habit. Anyway, they all liked these cookies and needed the recipe. So here it is! 

Ingredients 

120 g butter
½ c white sugar
1/3 c brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
½ c creamy peanut butter
1 egg
1 c flour
1 tsp baking soda
¼ tsp salt
¼ tsp cinnamon
½ c rolled oats
1 c chocolate chips (I use milk or half white, half milk)

Method: 
1. Suddenly remember you have a very expensive cake mixer you don’t use nearly enough and get it out of the cupboard. Oooh, shiny! Wipe the dust off it.



 











2.
Cream the butter, sugars, peanut butter and vanilla until all creamy and smooth. It won’t get as fluffy as if you were just creaming butter and sugar, cos that peanut butter is in there. I find heating the jar of PB in the microwave for 20 seconds is helpful to soften it up before you measure it out. Or you could just swear at it like I did the first time. That helps too.

 











 
3. Try and remember what you did. 


4. Oh! Flour, oats and the egg. And the other dry stuff. Like. Um. Oh, salt, cinnamon and baking soda. Mix in gently so that they are incoporated, but not heavily mixed.














5. Finally fold in the chocolate! Any variety you like.  The original recipe calls for dark chocolate, but I have some strange aversion to that and use milk chocolate in my cookies.

 












6. Scoop onto the cookie tray. I put about nine cookies onto each tray and I didn't press them down, because they flatten and spread as they cook, and again when they come out of the oven. 









































7. Bake carefully! They colour quite quickly - in about 8 minutes at fan bake on 180 degress celcius. Take them out when they are light brown, otherwise they get too crispy. 















And they're really, really good.

 












 
 

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