OK Ambrosia show me your stuff: Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies

So after having Ambrosia home for less then 2 hours, I realized that I needed to use her as soon as possible.  Please,I have been wanting a KitchenAid for years, do you seriously think that I’m going to wait a couple of days before I try it out.

Now why is my first recipe in Ambrosia, going to be Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies, you may ask?  Well, why the not.  Who doesn’t like the Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies?  Now normally when I make Oatmeal Cookies, I usually add raisins.  But a certain someone (who shall remain nameless) told me that he didn’t like raisins, he felt they were evil and he would prefer if I didn’t bake anything for him with raisins in it.  And since there is a better chance that he will be eating most of the cookies in this batch, I went with chocolate chips instead.

Lets talk about supplies.  First usually do all of my dry goods/baking purchases at one of the most amazing stores in the world, The Bulk Barn.  I truly love this store, and can spends hours going up and down its magnificent lanes (OK that might be a slight exaggeration, but you get my drift).  Usually I shop for my wet ingredients (milk, eggs, butter) at my local supermarket.

Now a couple words of advice though for those who plan to shop at Bulk Barn,  for the first time.

• If you have children, I would advice that you not take them with you, unless you have very good control or one of those kiddie-leash things that were really popular in the 90s.
• Bring a list and buy what you need from it first, then look around.  If you are like me you will end up buying every that you first lay your eyes on, and before you know it your basket weights  50 lbs and it kicks in that you still have to walk home.
• If you are on a budget I would suggest you add an additional 15% for any overages you might make.  This will help for when you decide to go down the candy isle and end up scooping up 5 lbs of gummi worms or wine gums.  I, myself have only spent less then $20 there once and that was because I only had $15 in my account at the time.

OK, back to the cookies.  The basis for this recipe orginally came from my Betty Crocker cookbook, that my mum gave me when I first moved out on my own. I have changed the recipe in a few ways, to add my own tastes.

• The first change was to use 1 cup (2 sticks) of butter instead of 1/2 cup of butter and a 1/2 of shortening.
• I use Spelt Oats, instead of regular oat.  These are much better for you, and they basically taste the same and look only slightly bigger then a regular oat.  Granted once they are mixed with all that sugar and butter and baked, they are probably not that good for you, but hey every little bit helps.
• I like to add 1/2 cup of sweetened shredded coconut,
• I use the jumbo chocolate chips instead of regular chocolate chips, I personally feel that regular size chocolate chips are just way to small
• And finally I add 1/4 tsp of Cayenne Pepper.  You might think this is strange, but this is something that I regualarly do.  I love adding spices that are regularly used in savory dishes to desserts and other baking.  If you don’t like then don’t use it, but this is something I do in all of my recipes.

Cheers, Chris

Oatmeal-Chocolate Cookies

2/3 cup granulated sugar

2/3 cup packed brown sugar

1 cup (2 sticks) of room temperature butter

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

2 large eggs

3 cups Spelt oats

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 cup of chopped walnuts

1/2 cup of sweetened shredded coconut

1 cup of jumbo chocolate chips

Heat oven to 375

Add all ingrediates except oats, flour, nuts, coconut and chocolate in mixer bowl, and mix at low-medium speed.  On a KitchenAid that would be about 3 or 4.  Do this until well mixed, it really only took a couple of minutes.

Stir in remaining ingrediates and mix well

Now I do not use rounded tablespoons that are dropped onto the cookie sheet, first because I could never get the tablespoons to appear rounded, so I just use a cheap ice-cream scoop that I picked up at a dollar store.  It will make a good sized cookie, but you will probably only want to place 8 scoops per batch.

Bake for 6 minutes, then turn the cookie sheet 180 degree and bake for another 6 minutes.  Let them rest on the sheet for a couple of minutes before taking them off the sheet and then place them on a wire rack to cool completely.

Try and make to many of these and have them for dinner.

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