Luxury Oatmeal Cookies
They look almost exactly like the picture in the book
Time: 2 Hours 5 Minutes
Ingredient Availability: 5/5
Difficulty: 1/5
My sister’s birthday just passed and her favorite cookie is an oatmeal raisin one. Instead of getting a gift, I decided to make her favorite. Well, I’m not sure if this specific recipe from The Baking Bible will be her favorite, but it’s worth a try. I don’t know what makes these Cookes luxury, but I do know that they’re different in that they mix the dough into granola rather than oats into the dough. Let’s see how they turn out.
Key Ingredients & Omissions:
Nothing here is particularly special or hard to find. I didn’t leave anything out, but I did use vegetable oil in the granola instead of canola or safflower oil.
Tools:
Bowls
Baking Sheet(s)
Food Processor or Stand Mixer
Cooking Review:
Mix Granola: 13 Minutes
After giving the walnuts a rough chop, I put them in a bowl along with the oats, brown sugar, cinnamon, and salt to combine. I poured the maple syrup, oil, and vanilla extract over the mixture and tossed it until it was evenly coated. The granola was then spread evenly over a large baking sheet.
Bake Granola and Prepare Dough: 20 minutes
I put the granola in the oven to bake for 20 minutes, turning the pan half way through. While the granola was baking, I mixed the flour with salt, baking soda, and flour, beat the eggs with the vanilla extract, and poured the raisins and chocolate chips in a large bowl. Once the granola was done, I let it cool for a while before mixing 4 cups of it into the raisins and chocolate chips.
Make Dough: 25 minutes
In the bowl of a stand mixer, I added the sugar and brown sugar and mixed it until combined. The butter was added next and mixed until smooth. The eggs were mixed in next until just combined, followed by the flour mixture. The flour was mixed in just until the flour was no longer visible. By this point, the granola was cool and added to the raisins and chocolate. The dough was added into the granola mix and folded together until evenly distributed. The recipe includes an option to use a food processor instead of the stand mixer to make the dough.
Refrigerate & Form Cookies: 6 minutes for 12 cookies + at least 30 min in refrigerator
After letting the dough rest in the refrigerator for 6 and a half hours, I lightly floured my hands and rolled out the dough into balls that were about 1 3/4” in diameter. If you’re dough is really cold, you probably don’t need to flour your hands; the dough isn’t that sticky when cold. The balls were transferred to a baking sheet to bake. The recipe says to do this in 3 batches, but at the size of my cookies, I only needed 2 batches.
Bake and Cool Cookies: 14-15 minutes/batch + 15 minutes of cooling
I baked the first batch for 14 minutes and the second for 15 minutes. After 6 minutes of baking, I rotated the baking sheet. After taking them out of the oven, I let them sit on the baking sheet for a few minutes before transferring them to a cooling rack. I waited about 15 minutes before giving one a try.
Analysis:
The granola is really the star of the show in these cookies. I would say it’s a way to have granola in cookie form. The sweetness levels are just right and the raisins add a little burst of additional fruity sweetness. Chocolate chips add a little bitterness and the walnuts add some nuttiness. The textures of this cookie are really good. Fresh, they have a crispy bottom but a soft top and interior. The nuts, oats, and raisins provide even more textural interest. One thing that I usually find in an oatmeal cookie is a fairly strong flavor of spices. In this cookie, that isn’t the case. The only spice in this recipe is cinnamon and it’s easy to miss. I’m going to give these a 7/10. When they are fresh and warm, they are definitely better than most oatmeal cookies you’ve had, but once cooled and softened, I feel you’ll miss some of those spices that come though in other oatmeal raisin cookies. They are good, just nothing truly special.
