Recipe 7: Oatmeal choco cookies - final conquered over a sweet!!!

6:30 pm

I am very skeptical as I start making another sweet (cookie). My first dish was a disaster in itself and had given all hopes to even try making another one. Now, since I have set to reinvent myself, wanted to give one more chance. Have decided to publish this, irrespective of the turnout.

8:10pm

As I sit down to write the experience and share the recipe (the second lot is in the oven), immediately after my family members have had tasted a bite, i am impressed with myself - the cookies have turned out to be scrumptious. I am terribly missing Anushka who is my best critic. I will have to wait until Monday to hear Anushka’s views of my hand-made oatmeal choco cookies. I would also want to see if Aarya loves to gobble on her dad's new kitchen creation.

The cookies are yummy. There is good crunch to the cookie. The texture is just superb. Only missing element is the chocolate flavor, which is not at all apparent.

Highly recommended recipe.. Very easy and total preparation of less than an hour.

Makes about 30 cookies of 2” diameter

Ingredients

Butter	75 gms	Amul (3/4th of the pack)
Brown sugar	¾ cup
White sugar	½ cup	Used normal sugar and made a powder in the mixie
All purpose flour (maida)	1 ½ cup
Cooking oats	2 cups	Have used regular quaker oats
Vanilla essence	1 tbpsn
Baking soda	1 tspn
Salt	1 tspn	The lesser the better
Water	½ cup
Milk chocolate	2 bars	I used dairy milk (cadbury’s); suggest to use readymade chocolate chips (not very sweet)

Method

1.    Soften the butter

o    Most sites I have seen has the following ways to soften butter and I have used the 1^st one –

§  Use a grater to grate the butter – this soften its and avoids melting

§  Put the butter in microwave @ the lowest degree, it should soften and not melt

§  Pound the butter cube between baking paper till it softens

o    I thought the easiest and the quickest way would be to grate it. It helped in freeing the butter, without any harms of melting it

2.    Add the powdered white sugar to the butter and whisk

3.    Add the brown sugar to the above mixture and whisk more (let the brown sugar completely dissolve; when you add the brown sugar, there is a sound the whole brown sugar makes while whisking, stop when you hear the sound, which means the brown sugar  has well dissolved)

4.    Add flour to the above mixture and whisk as hard as you can. This is the tough part and the mixture tends to start crumbling

5.    Boil some water and dissolve the baking soda into it

6.    Immediately put this boiled water in the above mixture and whisk more. The water with the mixture gives it a good smooth texture

7.    Add the oats, vanilla essence, salt and chocolate in the mixture and keep whisking (stirring it). (I actually pounded the chocolate bar into small pieces; guess that was not an ideal thing to do – should have used choco chips, instead)

8.    Mix all the ingredients together. It becomes a big rough piece of lump (advisable to taste it now; I added some more powdered sugar and little water)

9.    Leave this mixture in the refrigerator for 30 to 40 minutes

10. After 30 minutes, start making 2” diameter flat rounds and spread on a greased baking plate (grease the baking plate with butter)

11. Bake at 210^o for 15 to 20 minutes (check for your cookies after 15 minutes, the cookies are done once they change their colour to a reddish brown)

12. From the oven, keep it aside for 10 to 15 minutes to rest and cool

13. You are ready to binge now

Note:

·         When I tasted the batter, I though the mixture was a little salty – wait for it to finish the entire process, they just turn out well

·         It makes sense to put choco chips; the chocolate that I use actually melted and the flavor of the chocolate hasn’t come out