Sunday, January 17, 2010

Chewy Chocolate Chunk and Oat Cookies




Delhi and Gurgaon have been freezing this year and with friends and relatives being around on and off I have been too lazy and tied up to enter the kitchen. Nothing like snuggling into the blanket anytime the baby decides to nap :)! But one morning I got up and could literally smell the cookies I have been meaning to bake for over a month.

I have been trying to find an easy and healthy recipe for chewy chocolate chip cookies (chewy so my 14 month old son can eat some too...) and have tested a few recipes that I found online courtesy Rachel Ray, All recipes and a couple of other sites and came up with mine which is a little variant from the others but delivers the goods!

This recipe uses the quick cooking Quaker Oats which are heart healthy and give many benefits. I have given up trying to give my husband Oats or porridge for breakfast. Breakfast in our house can range from eggs & sausages to paranthas or dosas - I try to keep it simple and healthy but we do end up indulging on the weekends.

Though this is not the healthiest way to incorporate oats into our diet - I thought we had to make a start somewhere and incorporate the goodness of oats into our lifestyle - http://www.quaker.co.uk/Benefits.aspx

This cookie is a winner with my family and there usually isn't much left when the aroma of oats, cinnamon, chocolate baking waft from the kitchen and I have to hide a box for these to survive over 3 days....

Here goes and do leave comments and updates on how these came out:

1 cup butter softened (about 225grms)
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated white sugar
2 eggs
1tbsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon powder (you can add more for flavour)
3 cups quick cooking quaker oats
1.5 cups all-purpose flour (wanted to use whole wheat but haven't tried it with this variation)
1.5 cups chocolate chunks made from cadbury chocolates (made about 1/4 inch big chunks but you can use any chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, raisins etc)
a couple of spoons of milk

I creamed the butter and sugar in the food processor but it didn't beat too well - so I added about 2 tsps of milk - do add more if required but very little at a time. I then added the eggs. I mixed all the dry ingredients and added the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients (excluding the chocolate chunks).

I then made balls (slightly sticky dough) of the size of a table-tennis ball. I then add the chocolate chunks individually into the cookies and put them on a greased parchment. Flattened them slightly with the end of a wooden spoon and left them a little rounded towards the top . These cookies don't spread too much - so you can make the balls the size of the cookies you want.

I baked them for 13-15 mins at 165 degrees centigrade and then left them on the wire rack to cool. They were yummy and full of taste and I ate the ones that had extra chocolate chunks hidden in them.

I definitely got less than 2 dozen cookies with this recipe but didn't count how many I got....

Pictures too follow soon. And please do leave me some tips on getting the darned pictures right!

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