Week22: Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies with Chocolate chips. :-) mmmmm

This was not my original recipe though, I tried a different experiment first. 

Originally I was going to make white chocolate brownies with raspberry swirl. It didn't come out the way I wanted, so I went with another recipe. The middle 50% was very tasty, but the outside portions rose a bit much and became too cake like, but in a dry dense way. I think I will experiment with using half as much rising agents and more white chocolate next time. I'll show you the process anyway, and then! The actual cookies I ended up making. 

White chocolate and a raspberry mash with a bit of sugar. Got me all excited for this recipe.

White chocolate is very delicate. Too hot and it falls apart. This is why I like using a double boiler. I still had to watch it, so next time I would have melted the butter first, then added the white chocolate and stirred till just melted.

Almost there.

Liquid!

Skipped a few steps here, but I added some flour, eggs, and rising agent.

Add the raspberry mash.

Marbleize.

And bake. Brownies are always difficult because you want to ensure the center isn't raw, but that the sides are not overbaked. I could have kept the edges tastier by taking them out earlier, but the center would have been a gooey mess.

Here you can see a bit of the texture, how the edge is a bit higher with some air pockets from the rising agent, whereas the center is a bit more firm.

You can see the firm center on the chunk on the fork in this one. This portion was absolutely divine. It was the edges that weren't as good.

So instead I moved to an amazing peanut butter based recipe. Starts with butter and peanut butter.

Stir while it's melting.

Till smooth and homogeneous.

All good cookie dough recipes have both white and brown sugar in them. You can adjust the dough taste by varying the ratio.

Pour over the melted butter and peanut butter mixture.

I loved how this looks, so I took a few shots of it pouring.

Mix it all together.

Till smooth.

Once the mixture is no longer hot, add the eggs. Some recipes call for a certain number of whole eggs, plus just egg yolks or egg whites. Egg whites lend structure and "toughen" the dough, whereas yolks add flavor and soften the dough. This particular cookie, having flour and sugar and oats, would tend to be tougher and dry, so adding an extra yolk helps combat this.

Once in the bowl it's hard to tell, but this is just one egg white, but two egg yolks.

Beat till smooth and fluffy.

Add the dry ingredients, oats, flour, and rising agents.

Mix till combined. At this point the dough could be rolled out and baked to make really delicious peanut butter oatmeal cookies, but I wanted some chocolate in it. I didn't know what type yet, so time for a taste test.

I put white chocolate in a small bit of dough, and dark chocolate. The white chocolate was nice, but the dark chocolate was so much better.

So dark chocolate it is!

Roll it out to the right thickness and cut. I much prefer cookies made with a cutter, because you can ensure uniform thickness. It takes longer, but the texture of the final cookie is far superior to the dropped ball method.

Laid out on the sheet before baking.

I'm missing a shot of them finished baking, but they were amazingly delicious, so I will be making more and will update this post with photos of the finished cookie when I do.