Sunday, March 20, 2011

Cookie Carnival: Chocolate Brownie Oatmeal Cookies

Yum. Yum. Yum. I made these Chocolate Brownie Oatmeal Cookies from Quaker for the March Cookie Carnival and they were so, so good. With chocolate and oatmeal, how could they not be? I was curious about the cream cheese, though. Why was it there and what would it do to the cookie?

I made my first batch of cookies exactly as the directions said (I chilled the dough for an hour, scooped the dough onto the baking sheet, and baked them for about 10 minutes). Other than the dough being very hard to scoop (I should have scooped the dough first and then chilled it), the cookies turned out really good and we happily gobbled them up.

Of course, I wondered if I could make them even better. They had a nice chocolate flavor, but I wanted to pump it up a little with some additional chocolate chips. I also wanted them to be more fudgy (they are supposed to be like brownies, right?), and I wondered if freezing the scoops of dough and then cooking them from frozen would do the trick (this is what my sister does to make her incredible oatmeal chocolate-chip cookies so good and chewy).

I let the remaining dough come back to room temperature, mixed in 1 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips, scooped the dough on to waxed paper using my regular-sized cookie scoop, and froze the dough. I put the frozen dough on a baking sheet lined with parchment and cooked them at 350 for about 11 minutes. They seemed very underdone, but I hoped once they cooled they'd be really fudgy.

Boy, was I right. The cookies were amazing. This was one awesome chocolaty, fudgy, brownie-like oatmeal cookie. Remember to go HERE for the recipe.

Let's compare the before and after cookies:

The cookie on the left is from my first batch. A very tasty cookie, a little on the crisp side, not especially fudgy (They made very nice ice cream sandwiches). The cookie on the right has the extra chocolate chips and was baked from frozen. It was loaded with chocolate flavor and was super, super fudgy. As an added bonus, they didn't spread as much as the first batch which meant I could fit more cookies on the baking sheet. More cookies in less time. Awesome.

As with most things cookie, what you do will depend on what you want from your cookie. Do you like a more crisp cookie or a more fudgy cookie? Do you want to take the time to freeze the scoops of dough? (Although if you chill them for an hour you might as well freeze them for an hour.) For me, I want chewy, fudgy cookies, so I'm ready to scoop and freeze and wait for the prize.

As an end note, I'm still not sure about the cream cheese in the dough. You can't taste it at all, so maybe it helps the cookie to be more brownie-like. I think it needs further experimentation.

2 comments:

  1. I like chewy, fudgy cookies :) And thanks for the tips! Have a nice day!

    ReplyDelete
  2. These cookies look fantastic! I'm a chewy cookie person all the way.

    ReplyDelete

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