Recipe Notes: Chocolate Chunk Oatmeal Cookies with Pecans and Dried Cherries

17 September 2018

Recipe from The Perfect Cookie, America's Test Kitchen, 2017, p. 33

What additions can you make to an oatmeal cookie? Chocolate chips, for sure. Raisins are common. How about nuts? We've probably all had oatmeal cookies with one or even two of these addends, but never all three. That's what this recipe is all about, loading up a basic oatmeal cookie with lots of flavorful ingredients. Will it be too little, too much, or just right?

The recipe specified pecans, dried sour cherries, and chopped bittersweet chocolate for the additions. I used walnuts, because I had them on hand and they were mentioned in the recipe as an alternate to pecans. I used dried cherries because that's what I found at the supermarket. The bag didn't say sour, it just said cherries and they weren't very sour; the recipe suggests dried cranberries and these would be worth trying. I used chopped bittersweet chocolate, as specified. The procedure for making the dough was standard: the dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt) were whisked together in a bowl. The nuts, dried fruit, and chocolate were roughly chopped and mixed with rolled oats. Softened butter and brown sugar were beaten together in a stand mixer. An egg and vanilla extract were beaten into the sugar mixture. The dry ingredients were stirred in followed by the oat mixture. Using a #24 disher (smaller than what the recipe suggested, #16 or #20 would probably have been better) resulted in 19 cookies which were baked for 18 minutes for the first batch and 16 minutes for the second. Total time to make these cookies was 100 minutes.

I enjoyed these cookies. The mixture of the earthy nuts and oats with the bittersweet chocolate and sour-ish cherries was great. I didn't think there were too many extras added to the cookies, the ratio of cookie to additions was fine. However, the cookies were more crispy than chewy. This was my fault for over-baking them and making them a little too small, faults easily corrected, They taste good and are enjoyable, and with a little more attention to the details of baking should be just right.