Oatmeal Cherry Cookies are flat out inedible
Erin Mann is baking a new cake every week for a year from the "All Cakes Considered" cookbook and shares her adventures here on AnnArbor.com. Read past columns here.
Oatmeal Cherry Cookies spread out like pancakes while baking.
Erin Mann | Contributor
An oatmeal cookie with dried cherries and butterscotch chips sounded like a winner to me.
The original recipe is from Sheila Lukin's "USA Cookbook," and is a favorite of Melissa Gray’s family. Sheila Lukins was a cookbook author and food writer; most well-known for co-authoring The Silver Palate cookbook series and her weekly column in Parade magazine. Coincidentally, I baked these cookies on the one year anniversary of her passing.
I recently moved into a beautiful home on the north side of town. These cookies would be the first goodies baked in my new kitchen. I tested the oven with my oven thermometer and revealed a temperature difference of about 10 degrees. The other nice thing about my new-to-me oven is that is has a light so I can see what’s going inside without opening the door.
The recipe was just like any other cookie recipe except that it called for 1/4 cup of milk which was to be added after the eggs were mixed in. This was something different that I hadn’t seen in other cookie recipes. After some searching on the Internet, it appears it’s not that unusual at all.
I underestimated the amount of oatmeal I had on-hand and came up 1/2 cup short. I made do with the 2 cups I had and thought it wouldn’t be too big a deal because I’d also be mixing in 1/2 cup dried cherries and 1/2 cup butterscotch chips.
After mixing, something seemed “off” about the dough. It was definitely softer than other cookie doughs. I dropped nine evenly-spaced spoonfuls onto a parchment-covered cookie sheet.
These cookies fell victim to the dreaded spread during baking. Like little pancakes, they flattened out on the cookie sheet running into one another making it difficult to tell where one cookie ended and the other began.
I placed the bowl of dough in the fridge when I wasn’t using it to prep a new pan of cookies. This didn’t seem to help much.
What caused my baking blunder? A little Googling marked the butter or the baking soda as possible culprits.
I took a bite of one of the cooled cookies and immediately deemed it inedible. The cookie looked greasy. It was neither crispy nor chewy, and sort of fell apart in my hands. The whole batch went into the trash faster than you can say "Jack Robinson." The inviting tartness of dried cherries and delectable sweetness of butterscotch chips could not save the fate of this poor cookie.
A cookie is a terrible thing to waste. Consider yourself a cookie-baking expert? Send you tips my way!
Erin Mann is ruining diets one baked good at a time with her weekly baking adventures.
Email her at SheGotTheBeat@gmail.com to offer your baking wisdom or follow her on Twitter. Facebook users can also keep up-to-date with A CAKE A WEEK by joining the group.
Comments
Ann English
Tue, Sep 7, 2010 : 5:57 p.m.
Sounds like the discussion is leading to "partial substitute suggestions". Not enough regular oats? Fill in with Krusteaz Oat Bran. I recently made cookies substituting applesauce for shortening. I also made a gelatin dish using canned spinach instead of thawed frozen spinach, and it didn't taste as good as usual. But it is still edible. Ingredient proportions are important to keep. Too much fluid results in toppings falling right off cookies calling for them. I'm sure that dried cherries in a cookie recipe will work better than frozen ones thawed would. Fresh blueberries added to pancake batter result in better-looking pancakes than thawed ones would.
Kristina Birk
Tue, Sep 7, 2010 : 5:37 p.m.
Erin, if you really want to understand baking, I highly recommend the book Bakewise by Shirley Corriher (Cookwise is also very good). She gives very clear and detailed information about the importance of accuracy in measuring and ingredient proportion, and how to construct a balanced recipe (and correct one that's imbalanced). Unlike other forms of cooking, baking really is both an art AND a science.
bunnyabbot
Tue, Sep 7, 2010 : 4:29 p.m.
I agree with others about the recipe instructions. I also agree with the poster who said the best oatmeal cookie recipe is the Quacker Oat recipe. I use dried cherries or dried cranberries, add extra cinnamon. I make mega cookies with a one ounce scoop and the cookies always get raves and never last long. Great crumbled over ice cream or broken up with milk as cereal. not following the recipe leads to waste.
Maple
Tue, Sep 7, 2010 : 11:12 a.m.
Oats tend take on liquids like flour does, so if you were 1/2 cup short on oats I would have recommended adding in flour a little at a time until the dough was a normal-looking consistency. You could also have put in 1/2 cup of wheat germ or bran or grape nuts cereal or any other abosorbent grain in a pinch. Personally, I add an extra 1/2 cup of flour to the Quaker Oats recipe.
Marge Biancke
Tue, Sep 7, 2010 : 10:40 a.m.
When baking you must follow the recipe. Your didn't have the proper amount of oats to absorb the liquid-the result being the tough cookie with too much spread.
Ethics Advocate
Tue, Sep 7, 2010 : 9:15 a.m.
I'm not sure what the point was of having this article at all. Perhaps it is just to be used as a lesson on following recipe quantities precisely. Even so, the title of the article seems very unfair to the recipe book author.
dawnsong
Tue, Sep 7, 2010 : 8:21 a.m.
I agree with the prior comments. I make a chocolate chip cookie recipe in which the major ingredient is oats. If even a little short on oats, the cookies will spread and be greasy.
fensk
Tue, Sep 7, 2010 : 8:21 a.m.
I agree with the above...maybe the cookies would have turned out with the correct measurements used. Never know, they sound good, would hate to count them out based on what happened.
Nicole
Tue, Sep 7, 2010 : 7:14 a.m.
>"What caused my baking blunder?" A big contributing factor is not actually following the recipe. Absolutely agreed. Your failure hardly reflects a failing on the part of a recipe that you did not follow properly.
Kristina Birk
Tue, Sep 7, 2010 : 6:23 a.m.
"What caused my baking blunder?" A big contributing factor is not actually following the recipe. All that milk, and not enough oats? Of course they're going to spread, no matter how long you chill the dough. I have always found the Quaker Oats recipe to be the best one for chewy cookies, calls for 3 cups of oats and no milk. It takes well to any add-ins you can think up.