Toble-ly Delicious Oatmeal Cookies

Sometimes I feel like I might be a heartless beast of a girl.
Let me give you an example.  I have an intense love affair with the combination of oats and chocolate.  Oatmeal chocolate chip cookies are like love in its most pure and patty form.  But they need to be a certain way, you know?  Adding nuts is a good thing, but when you venture outside the tree nut or peanut butter category, you've gone too far, my friend.
It's a week before Christmas, and we're at my parents' house celebrating the holidays with my mom's side of the family.  Everything is all aglow with Christmas cheer and my relatives are all looking their finest.  Mom has this huge spread of appetizers out that include several cookie jars filled with goodies she's so sweetly and thoughtfully made for everyone to share.

Wait!  Mom!  How could you not tell me you made my favorite cookie!  Cousin Ashley and I were so excited about our discovery of oatmeal chocolate chip cookies on the table we couldn't wait to get our grubby little hands on them.
Chomp!  Chomp...  Chomp......
"Is there cinnamon in here?"
"Yes, do you like it?" Mom asks with a sweet and loving smile on her face.
I wrinkle my nose at the thought of cinnamon being introduced to what otherwise is the perfect combination. Mom stares at me as I (without an instant of hesitation) chunk the cookie from quite a distance and with a good degree of force into the nearby trashcan and reluctantly chew the soggy gob in my mouth.  Ashley and Mom stare at me in shock that I would act like such an evil spoiled brat on Christmas, and right in front of the person who made the cookie, no less.  What can I say, I am picky about my oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.

Thankfully, despite my ogre-like qualities, Santa did not bring me coal at Christmas.  I got some great stuff, and some legit chocolate.  We're talking Toblerone.  That heavenly bar filled with nuances of honey, almonds and nougat.  Milk chocolate at its finest, in my opinion.  Unfortunately, perhaps my troll-ish behavior was just a warning sign that all those calories I packed on over the holidays were quiet literally making me troll-shaped.  Time to dispense with the Toblerones in the best way possible.  Time to make some cookies.  Without cinnamon.

Ignore the coffee ring and dot of hot sauce under the cutting board.  I wanted cookies RIGHT AFTER breakfast, okay?  It's oatmeal.  That's healthy, right?  Check out that Global Cook's Knife Jeremy got me for Christmas.  Yeah, baby.

Toblerone Chip Oatmeal Cookies
Inspired by Joy the Baker's Oatmeal Walnut Cocoa Nib Cookies
Makes about 2 dozen large cookies

2 sticks salted butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
1 scant cup Sugar in the Raw
1/8 c blackstrap molasses
2 large eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 c all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 teaspoon kosher or sea salt
2 1/2 c old fashioned oats
1 c. coarsely chopped toasted almonds
1/2 c semi sweet mini-morsels
1 cup chopped Toblerone bars (2 full size candy bars)

Preheat oven to 350 and line two baking sheets with parchment paper, or grease the baking sheets if you don't wish to use parchment.  Use a mixer to whip butter, sugar and molasses together until fluffy.  Add the eggs one at a time, blending well after each addition.  Add vanilla.  While that's working itself into a fluffy frenzy, find a medium bowl.  Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.  Add this flour mixture all at once to the butter mixture and keep mixing until it's just combined.  Stir in the oats, chocolate chips, toblerone that you haven't stuffed in your face yet, and almonds.  Keep mixing until your arm falls off everything is well combined.  If you have a melon baller (The toughest tool in the drawer that gets the most dough) or a small ice cream scoop, you can use this to measure out identical little cookie blobs to go on your cookie sheets.  Make sure your blobs don't touch and try to get them the same size.  I used a tablespoon to make rounded balls about the same size.  Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, or until cookies are light brown on top.      Let cool 5 minutes before transferring to cool on wire racks or just on the counter on parchment if you aren't lucky enough to have some spiffy wire racks.  That's how mellon baller and I roll.

Want to make new friends?!  Make ice cream sandwiches out of these cookies with chocolate, vanilla, and butter almond ice cream.  Scoop the ice cream after it has softened a bit and pop the assembled sandwiches in the freezer to firm up before transporting.  These cookies are just the right amount of sweet, salty, crunchy and chewy.  The Sugar in the Raw gives them and interesting little crunch, but if you prefer to swap the raw sugar and molasses for 1 cup packed brown sugar, that will totally work too.

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Maple Nutmeg Butter Cookies

First of all, you should know that you can only make these cookies for people you love.  Because cookies that require chilling, rolling, and cookie cutters are only worth it for people you love.

That said, you should make these cookies.  You should make them on a night when you don't have a lot else going on, because they are going to take some time and you are going to make quite the mess, my little cookie queen (or king).

You should also be aware that when these cookies are implemented as a bargaining tool in a cookie exchange, they are both a blessing and a curse.
Blessing:  You get mad compliments.
Curse:  You don't want to give them away.  Blast, that buttery, maple goodness is so sneaky like that.

I found this recipe over at Smitten Kitchen.  This woman is the heat, no lie.  She has performed a great miracle and has achieved a lofty goal.  A goal that I aspire to.  This snazzy lady makes her living by literally rolling out of bed, cooking whatever she feels like at that particular juncture in time and blogging about it.  And she's worked hard to get there.  Rock on, Deb.  Live the dream.

Maple Nutmeg Butter Cookies
Ever-so-lightly adapted from Smitten Kitchen.

1 cup (2 sticks) salted butter, at room temperature (I used Plugra)
1 cup (200 grams) granulated sugar
1/2 cup maple syrup (Grade B makes for an explosion of maple flavor, but use Grade A in a pinch)
1 large egg yolk
3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1 teaspoon kosher salt


You know what?  "They" say you should bake with unsalted butter.  I never do, probably never will.  I think it tastes more buttery with the salt, thank-you-very-much.  Do what you feel.

Use a stand mixer (if you have one and are obsessed with it like me) to combine butter and sugar with the paddle attachment until fluffy.  Add egg yolk.  Drizzle in maple syrup.  Lick cup measure. What?  Sorry.
In a separate bowl, stir together flour, salt and nutmeg.  Add flour mixture into butter mixture, just until combined.  Divide your crumbly dough into 4 balls, wrap each in plastic wrap, chill in the fridge for at least two hours, or overnight.  Don't skip this step even though you're tempted.  I have skipped this step a million and a half times, and then I pout about why I can't roll out my dough and make pretty shapes.  Cry baby.

Preheat your oven to 350 and line at least a couple baking sheets with parchment paper.  If you use wax paper instead, you'll set your ever-loving house on fire.  True story.

Flour your very clean counter top or kitchen table with a handful of flour.  Keep the flour handy so the dough doesn't stick to the table, your hands, or your rolling pin.  Yes, you're going to need a rolling pin.  Don't have one?  Use an empty wine bottle, you lush.  Take one of your four doughballs out of the fridge.  Unwrap.  Plop in flour.  Beat the living daylights out of it with your rolling pin until it sweetly submits.  Roll out your dough about 1/8 inch thick and cut fun little shapes out.  If you don't have cookie cutters you are a terribly boring person, you can use the mouth of a jar to cut perfect little circles.  Cut cookies go on the parchment and into the oven for 8 minutes.  For smaller cookies, watch them and maybe take them out at 7 minutes, depending on how browned you want your cookies.  Ball up your dough scraps and wrap them and refrigerate them for after you have used up your initial dough balls.  When your cookies are done, remove the batch from the oven and slide the whole sheet of parchment and cookies off the pan so your pan can cool and be reused for another batch.  If you have cooling racks, use them now.  If you are like me and you don't have cooling racks, ask for some for Christmas.

Confession time.  I got so sick of all that leftover dough (that I had already worked and thus was more pliable than I wanted) I threw out at least a handful of it at the end.  By the Beard of Zeus, I already had like 5 dozen cookies!  Remember, there's no judgement here.  I won't tell the baking police, I promise.  Take that last batch out of the oven, clean your flour coated kitchen filled with destruction and cookies, and go have a glass of eggnog with a cookie.  You deserve it.

And how did that cookie exchange go?  I think I came out on top with some pretty good loot (and some of my leftover maple cookies I secretly hoarded).

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