Happy Easter! I don't have anything Easter themed ready for the day, but here's a sunny picture to tide you for a few days.
And another taste (sorry, couldn't resist) of what's to come:
That's Meyer lemon macarons filled with Meyer lemon curd up top, and Caramelized White Chocolate Pudding below. My dessert making has been a little bit haphazard of late, but the stuff I've been making, when I get around to it, has been pretty fantastic. In honor of Easter and the tail end of Meyer Lemon season, I will be making a Shaker Lemon Pie this evening, but for you, I'm adding to the endless piles of chocolate that appear on this holiday.
These cookies, however, are much better than a boring hollow chocolate bunny. Kind of like a brownie in cookie form, these have chocolate three ways, brown sugar and oats for a perfectly chewy texture, and just a touch of cinnamon. Also like brownies, they're a bit fragile, especially when warm, so I prefer to make smaller cookies.
I've noticed a real dearth of cookie recipes on the blog, which is weird—cookies are some of my favorite desserts, and I have all sorts of classics that haven't gotten up here yet. I've been making these cookies for several years, and finally they're here, thanks to a promise to provide the recipe to several online friends.
Oatmeal Brownie Cookies
Heavily adapted from a recipe in Baking: From My Home to Yours. This is a cookie that, in my opinion, requires a cold glass of milk, but they'd also probably be great with ice cream or even a cup of coffee. I'd also imagine that they would be pretty good with some chopped nuts, but as I'm not usually partial to nuts in cookies, I've never tried it.
2.5 ounces unsweetened cocoa powder, natural or Dutched (about ¾ cup)
7 ounces unbleached flour (about 1¼ cup) (Note: last time I used 3 ounces whole wheat pastry flour and 4 unbleached flour, and it added a nice body to the cookies)
1 teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon cinnamon
12 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped and divided
9 ounces dark brown sugar (about 1¼ cup packed)
8 ounces (2 sticks) unsalted butter, in pieces (cold is fine)
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
6 ounces rolled oats (about 1½ cups)
Place the oven racks in top & bottom thirds of the oven and preheat to 350ºF. Line two baking sheets with parchment or silicone; set aside.
Sift the cocoa powder into a large bowl. Add the flour, soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon and whisk to combine; set aside.
Set a medium heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water. Add the sugar and 8 ounces of the chocolate (reserving the rest) and stir regularly. When the chocolate is about half melted, add the butter and continue to stir until the entire mixture is melted—it will still be grainy. Don't overheat, or the butter will separate.
Remove the pan from the heat and whisk in the eggs one at a time; the mixture will become very shiny. Beat in the vanilla, then scrape the mixture into the dry ingredients. Stir until mostly combined, then add the remaining chocolate chunks and the oats and stir just until there are no more streaks of flour.
Drop the dough by level tablespoonfuls onto the baking sheets; a dozen to a sheet should give them space to spread out. Bake 12-14 minutes, rotating top to bottom and front to back halfway through the cooking time. Transfer to a rack to cool. If the cookies are very fragile (especially if you made bigger ones), leave on the pan to cool for a minute or two before transferring.
Repeat with remaining dough, cooling the sheets between batches. You can chill the dough before baking, but the cookies will spread a little bit less and take longer to cook.
These will keep, well wrapped, for several days at room temperature and for a couple months (if you can stand it) in the freezer.
Makes about 5 dozen cookies
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