Saturday Night Baking Fever

I ask you this question: What does one do on a weekend evening with no plans and nothing on TV?

Obviously, one bakes three batches of cookies. And, since one is bored and lonely, one convinces Baby Chip to help by giving her the job of Baking Photographer. Thus, all photo credits for this post go to my aspiring photographer sister.


If you can't tell from my sidebar, I am an avid reader of any and all baking/food-related blogs. One of my absolute favorites has to be Joy the Baker. I kind of want to be Joy. Not gonna lie. She seems all cool and chill and together in a way that I only aspire to be at my current spazzy all-over-the-place stage. Anyway! So I was perusing her index for something to bake, my only criterion being that I have the ingredients on her list in my kitchen (laziness was making a trip to the grocery store a total non-option). And eureka! This post and recipe are based on Joy the Baker's Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal Cookies, adapted a little to fit my kitchen's offerings and my taste buds.

Ingredients

For the cookie dough mixture itself:

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened

1/2 cup white granulated sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar, packed

1 large egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup all-purpose flour (I used whole wheat)

1 1/4 cup oats, old fashioned or quick cooking

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

(Joy's recipe calls for 1/2 teaspoon of salt here...but I forgot to add it. The cookies still tasted amazing without it, so do with your salt what you please.)

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Generous pinch fresh grated nutmeg (I used the store-bought stuff, so I interpreted "generous pinch" as "two shakes of this little can")

Joy's Add-ins:

1 medium apple, peeled, diced small (I used the apple reject in my crisper...I think it was a Roma)

1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice

3/4 cup walnuts (I omitted these, since I'm usually more of a chewy cookie fan than a crunchy one)

My Add-ins:

1/3 cup semisweet chocolate chips

1/3 cup white chocolate chips

1/2 cup raisins

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

2. In a small bowl, peel and dice the apple and toss with lemon juice. Set aside.

3. Beat the sugars and butter until creamy, about 3 to 4 minutes. Add the egg, beating for 1 minute. Add the vanilla extract and beat until blended.

(True confession here. I forgot to add the brown sugar when I was first creaming together the butter and granulated sugar. In fact, I didn't realize I forgot to add it until I was in the middle of step four below, and realized that I still had brown sugar sitting on the counter that I hadn't used yet. So I wound up adding the brown sugar after the egg and vanilla had already been mixed in. Kinda unorthodox, maybe, but the cookies still turned out totally fine. That said, do as I say, not as I do.)

4. Whisk together the oats, flour, baking powder, baking soda, spices, and salt (if you don't forget to add it like a dummy). Add dry ingredients to the butter and egg mixture, slowly beating until just incorporated. I decided to improvise and make "healthy cookies" and "not-so-healthy cookies," so I split my dough mixture into two bowls at this point.

5. Stir the apple chunks and raisins into one bowl of reserved dough.

6. Add your semisweet and/or white chocolate chips to the other batch of mixed-up dough.

7. Bake at 350 degrees for 10 to 13 minutes or until the cookies have reached your desired doneness (I left mine in for about 12 minutes, until the bottoms were just starting to brown but hadn't gotten crispy yet.) My cookies stuck to my cookie sheets a little bit, which I think happened because a) my cookie sheet is 100 years old and doesn't have any nonstick left in it anymore and b) I'm terrified to use parchment paper because one of my college roommates once set it on fire. So even though Joy said to line my cookie sheets with parchment paper...I did not.

 8. Let cool on the cookie sheets for about 5 minutes, then transfer to wire racks (I lined my wire racks with wax paper).

Not gonna lie, both of these cookies tasted fantastic warm from the oven (but I think I'd be hard pressed to find a cookie that didn't). I was surprised to find, though, that the next day, the apple and raisin cookies were still perfectly soft and chewy! Probably due to the moisture given to the cookies by the apple, which I had initially been nervous about using (I'd never done apple cookies before). So in the end, even though I thought the chocolate batch would be my favorites (I tend to be a "not so healthy" person when it comes to baked goods), the apple cinnamon raisin ones were my hands-down favorite. (Chocolate chip raisin cookies, you are still scrumptious. Please do not be sad and forlorn.)

Links in this post:
http://www.joythebaker.com/