Time for Tuesdays with Dorie! This week Stefany of Proceed with Caution chose Chunky Peanut Butter and Oatmeal Chocolate Chipsters from Dorie's oh-so-fabulous book, Baking From My Home To Yours. There is not too much to say about this recipe, other than it was great! I followed the recipe pretty closely, instead of two sticks of butter I used one butter and one margarine. Why would I do this? I love butter, but once I was making cookies that used one cup of butter and I only had one stick and one stick of margarine, which was strange because I don't even know why I would have purchased stick margarine since I am a 'friend of butter' but anyway, I loved the end result. Something about the oil or whatever it is in margarine that makes the cookies spread less and puff up more, and stay just a touch softer. I like my cookies soft. But I would never use all margarine, just half and half. If a recipe says "butter, no margarine" I usually follow, but if it just says "butter" I take liberties and do halfsies with Blue Bonnet.
Whew, felt like confession, glad I got that out of the way. Now on to my other teensy weensy change, I had a bag of Nestle Toll House Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Swirled morsels, just chillin' in my pantry for a while. The bag was 10 ounces. Dorie's recipe called for 9 ounces. A fine trade.
I loved the nutmeg and cinnamon and vanilla, those alone would make almost any cookie delicious, add in some peanut butter, and oatmeal, and chocolate chips, yum!
The bad news is that my husband, the main cookie monster of our house (I would prefer cake or bread to cookies, although I do love cookies), did not like them. At all. And there are no scary ingredients like, gasp, coconut, or, shudder, cashews (just for clarification I love both), or something he can't stand. He liked all of the ingredients, but he said these cookies were too dry and too oatmeal-y. He had one bite. Can you believe he only took one bite of a cookie?!? He did not give these little gems the common courtesey of a second bite, maybe a sip of milk inbetween, no, just put it down with one sad little bite mark. Poor cookie. On the other hand I liked them, and the kids loved them, yay! And I got to use up some oatmeal, score!
My one little problem, or maybe footnote, for these cookies is that they look underdone when they are done. If you read my baby nina loafies post you might remember that I am crazy and love it ooey gooey almost underdone but not, well I was a little afraid I would take these out too early and they would completely fall apart because of the oatmeal -- which I have had happen, so I waited until I was 'sure' they were done. And I really should have taken them out at the earliest time mentioned in the recipe and not second guessed, pulled the sheet out, the popped it back in the 'make sure' they were done. Oh-well.
