The only chocolate-containing component in my holiday baked goods assortment, 17-31: Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies are honestly pretty good any time of year. So if you’re reading this at some other time of year besides Christmas Eve, don’t feel like you can’t make these.
I found a way to mess these up as well (seems like this year I had a hard time with some things that should have been really easy), but I’ve made them before previously to this, and both times (then and now) they’re still definitely very edible and good.
According to my notes above, I made these a little under 3 years ago and added maple syrup–probably because I didn’t have orange juice or raisins and I was trying to compensate for the missing sweetness those would have provided. It mentions above to use an ice cream scoop to make cookies–make sure it’s a SMALL one or you’ll have the problem I had.
Ingredients. I had everything for this one (including the correct kind of oats, unlike when I made 17-68: Oatmeal Raisin Cookies), which tends to happen when you specifically shop for recipes rather than try to cobble them together out of what you have lying around (my usual strategy).
Butter and brown sugar, still somewhat packed.
Action shot of me adding in the egg while the mixer was running.
Poor attention to detail was one of my problems here–I skipped the step of blending in the vanilla, cocoa, and orange juice and went right to the oats and flour. I didn’t realize it until the oats and flour were in the bowl, and I added them in right then, but I think that might have been part of the reason the cookies seemed off later.
Chopped up walnuts in the food processor.
All the good bits before the final blend. This dough had some of the same problems as 17-61: Vanilla Chip Cookies (namely, a too low flour-to-butter ratio), and behaved much the same way–too wet when putting it on the sheets, and spreading out too far when baked.
I mentioned above that I used an ice cream scoop as suggested on the recipe card. I thought (even above) that I used one that was way too big. Thinking about it now (especially reflecting on the low amount of flour and looking at the picture of the cookies on the sheet), I think my scoop was probably an okay size. If the cookies had spread out a normal amount and not flattened because of too much butter, I think they would have been okay.
After baking–they’re nice and perfectly round, but much too thin, wide, and brittle. All symptoms of too much butter and not enough flour.
Here’s one close up. Chocolate cookies make it difficult to gauge browning and color change like with a regular sugar or butter cookie dough, but the underneath of most of them was really “holey”. You can see the tops here too are a bit pitted-looking. They still tasted okay, but it could have been so much better.
Here’s this recipe, 17-31: Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies along with the other recipes I made for my holiday gifts this year:
- 17-37: Holiday Cookies
- 17-43: Orange Date Quick Bread
- 17-52: Apricot Macaroons
- 17-61: Vanilla Chip Cookies
- 17-67: Coconut Crescents
I’d make the same assessment of these that I did for 17-61: Vanilla Chip Cookies: they need more flour. I’d attempt them again with maybe 1.5 cups flour (not as much as the others because they have the oats in them to soak up some of it) and see if you got a firmer, more traditional cookie.
Not sure why I was ok with it the first time I made this recipe, probably because I used oatmeal oats and they soaked up even more of the liquid. Or I didn’t know any better. 🙂
Grade: B
