Standard Cookies

I've been asked to post this so, slave that I am to public pressure, here are my oatmeal cookies. The Caramel Slices recipe may or may not be printed at a later date.

Recipes generally tell you to pre-heat your oven, but I prepare so slowly that doing so is a waste of electricity. At some point in your process you'll need your oven pre-heated to 170°. The other reason why you can hold off heating the oven is that you want your oatmeal to start absorbing the dampness of the mixture. The longer you leave the mixture uncooked, the softer your oatmeal will get. Don't be afraid to make these early in the day, leave the mixture in the fridge (there's fresh eggs so it's got to be in the fridge) to soak and then bake in the evening.

Start with a bowl, a block of butter (about 250g), 200g of soft brown sugar and 75g of white sugar. Throw them in together.

Butter that you've taken out of the fridge is generally hard and difficult to mix in so either take it out early, cut it into cubes and leave it to soften or bung the block whole into the microwave for no more than 20 seconds.

Take a fork (not a whisk or blender or wooden spoon, just a good, old-fashioned fork) and mix everything in until it's a buttery, surgery paste. It's really important that it's properly mixed as patches without sugar result in unsweetened biscuits.

Once you're all mixed in, grab a couple of eggs and break them in. Mind you don't drop in any shells! Add in 2x coffee-spoon full of vanilla essence and start stirring again.

150g of cream or plain flour (not self-raising) goes in next. Mix it all up.

125g chopped Walnuts (or whatever nuts you like, pecan is great too!), 175g Chocolate chips and 260g oatmeal (porridge oats) go in next.

When you are finished mixing, you should get something like this. I can't stress how important it is to get an even mixture, not getting any nuts or, worse, chocolate, in your cookie is the total pits.

This recipe, like all good cookie recipes, spreads out once you bake it so, when you're seperating it out, roll nothing bigger than a golf-ball. I generally use 2 teaspoons to roll the balls. What I noticed when cooking is that the base tends to get very crispy so I branched out into silicon moulds for part of the mixture. These leave the cookies soft all over and are prefect for soft-cookie lovers or served with a scoop of ice-cream. The moulds are also a little more forgiving on your cooking time so if you let them go a little long because you're off playing cards or similar, you can get away with it.

Personally I prefer a little crunch in my cookie so I'll eat up all the tray-baked ones if I've made both.

This mix makes about 40 golf balls, a bit less with silicone moulds as they are a little larger. Bake for about 15mins, keeping an eye on them so you don't burn them. Probably better to shoot for a shorter cooking time, check them and leave them in if they aren't golden brown.

[This is where the pic would be..... 

........if I had remembered to take 

one of the baked cookie.
Presentation fail, go me!]

Leave them to cool on the tray for about 10-15 mins before moving them to a rack to cool completely or tuck in and savage them while they are still warm! You'll need napkins if you eat them warm, there's a pretty high butter content and you don't want your card sleeves sticking together!

Enjoy!!