Chewy Oatmeal Cranberries Cookies

Cereal - one of my many obsessions. I am like a cereal junkie, I can eat cereal for the whole day, for the whole week. Sometimes I like to eat cereal out of the box, other times I like to mix cereal with nuts and dried fruits. I like to use just enough milk to mix with cereal, making sure the cereal is well soaked with liquid without any trace of milk in the bottom of the bowl.

I love all cereal related stuff - oatmeal, granola, muesli.. basically I can always substitue lunch and dinner with breakfast food... probably it is the chewy and crunchy texture that I get addicted to. It may sound bland to most people, but I just love kids' food.

Out of all the cookies breed, chewy oatmeal cookies can be the easiest thing to make on earth. I don't think you really need the exact measurement for all the ingredients, you can always mix and match different elements to customize the flavor.. the failure rate can be as low as 5%, unless you really suck at using the oven or too bad of eye sight to read the scale. There's no reason the homemade cookies are not edible or even doesn't taste good.

This is a classic oatmeal cookies with cranberries recipe. I always convince myself that this is healthy food with lots of fiber and vitamins so that I wouldn't feel guilty of eating the whole batch. I can't stop myself tearing up the irregular shapes or ugly ones hence ended up devouring most of the batch..


what you need:

1 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
6 oz unsalted butter at room temperature
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup (packed) light brown sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 2/3 cups oatmeal
1/2 cup dried cranberries

How to proceed:
Preheat the oven to 190c.
In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
In a mixer, beat the butter and granulated sugar until smooth. Mix in the brown sugar, then the egg, and vanilla.
Stir in the dry ingredients, then the oats and cranberries.
Drop the batter by rounded teaspoons 2-inches apart on the baking sheets and use a fork to gently flatten the dough.
Bake the cookies for 12 minutes.

Chocolate hazelnut bites

Everyone knows I am a big sweet tooth, I can't survive a day without digging into my candy jar four times a day, eating dessert after lunch and dinner, and a midnight dose of sugar. Sugar is therapeutic, kicking up one's energy while consoling one's emotion, unfortunately it comes with a side effect of extra fat.... the amount of sugar intake.. totally depends on self control (which I have none) and how you evaluate the pros and cons (I rather work out fanatically to offset the cons).

I love cookies, bite size snacks, something one can nibble on while getting bored or enjoying a moment at ease. They come in simple ingredients of sugar, butter, and flour for a classic sables; or spice things up with chocolate, nuts, herbs, citrus, for more indulgence. Yesterday I made a batch of chocolate hazelnut cookies based on David Lebovitz's recipe.

what you need:
8oz or 225g bittersweet chocolate (I used half 72% Valrhona Araguani)
1.5oz or 45g butter
2 eggs
1/3 cup granulate sugar
1 cup toasted hazelnut
1/2 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
a pinch of fleur de sel
more granulate sugar and powdered sugar for coating the cookies

how to proceed:
Preheat the oven to 190c.
Chop the chocolates into small pieces. Melt the chocolate and butter together in a bain-marie.
Whip the eggs and sugar together until they turn pale and form a ribbon. Stir in the melted chocolate.
In a food processor, pulverize the nuts with the flour, then add the baking powder. Add a pinch of fleur de sel. Stir the ground nut mixture into the chocolate batter.
Chill the batter in the fridge for 1-2 hours.
Roll the chocolate cookie batter into 1 inch balls. Roll each ball first in the granulate sugar, then the powdered sugar.
Bake in oven for 15 minutes, swapping the top and bottom baking sheets about half way through the baking.

The recipe was amazing, crisp on the outside and soft and moist inside, full of intense flavor of chocolate and hazelnut. What else does a chocolate lover ask for if every bite is chocolate. Note that not to take short cut of using hazelnut powder because it is the tiny pieces of hazelnut that gives the essential texture. A little bit of flour and butter just to lighten things up.

Next time I probably would add some coffee powder to accentuate the flavor.. making it mocha hazelnut cookies.. I think it would be awesome!!

Cookies fantasia

I suddenly had the urge to make cookies in the recent weeks. Cookies just like muffins are very easy to make, making the dough is just a matter of combination of ingredients. The basic of butter, flavor, egg yolk, and sugar, with an added twist to spice up the characters. It doesn't really require much techniques to produce decent products, with additional care and creativity, you can create something personal and exceptional.

Three kinds of cookies in one day, from left to right, almond chocolate, hazelnut, and chocolate mix with vanilla flavor.

I tried something different yesterday, mixing green tea flavor with chocolate. surprisingly it tastes better than the plain one.. simply because the green tea dissolves the greasiness of butter and goes well with chocolate. It is easy to eat a dozen of them because of the lightness... perfect for the weekend afternoon with your own cup of black coffee.