Oatmeal Cookies: How To Never Over- Or Under-Bake Cookies Ever Again

The other day Laura was about to bake up a batch of oatmeal cookies and she asked me for some advice:

Laura: So, our oven I think runs cooler than the one in our old place. So, should I put the temp up 25 degrees higher? And add two minutes to the cooking time? Or should I add 15 degrees and one minute? Or what?

Dan: No. All your questions are wrong.

And I wonder why Laura doesn't seek my advice more often.

But let me explain what I was trying to get at. Baking conditions can vary significantly from kitchen to kitchen. Some ovens run cold, others hot. Which means cookies baked to perfection in 12 minutes in one oven can burn to a crisp in another.

Furthermore, baking conditions can vary meaningfully even in the same kitchen: Is it a hot summer afternoon, or a cold winter morning? Did you leave your ingredients out on the counter for an hour while you did something else, warming the shortening, milk and eggs? Do you obsessively check your cookies while they bake (uh, like I do), thereby wasting your oven's heat? Any of these factors can impact a recipe's results.

Therefore, if you're baking something for the very first time, or if you're baking in a new kitchen, be sure to observe the following three rules:

1) Be aware that something unexpected could happen in your baking results.

2) Follow your recipe and cooking times to the letter, but test bake a mini-batch first. Don't risk an entire sheet of cookies.

3) Check the results. If you need to make an adjustment, tweak one--and only one--variable. Start by adjusting the cooking time.

Why adjust the cooking time rather than the temperature? Because it's the easiest variable to adjust on the fly. If things come out underdone, add 1-2 minutes to the cooking time. If they come out overdone, subtract 1-2 minutes. [Protip: Always remember to err on the side of undercooking. You can always put underdone cookies back in the oven. Burnt cookies are lost to humanity forever.]

Laura's mistake was making assumptions about the oven in our new kitchen--and tinkering with multiple baking variables--before she even tested anything. This is a recipe for sadness... and tiny little slabs of carbon. If you start making multiple changes before you've even tested a single cookie, how can you know what the proper time and temperature should be at all?

What I was trying to say when I tactlessly told Laura "all your questions are wrong" was that you can't know what variable to tweak... until you know what variable to tweak. Do a test batch first.

Know this, and you'll never screw up a batch of cookies again.

************************************
Oatmeal Cookies

Ingredients:
1/3 cup butter
2/3 cup Crisco or vegetable shortening
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 cups oats

Directions:
1) Thoroughly cream shortening and brown and white sugars. Add eggs and vanilla and mix well.
2) Sift flour with baking soda and salt, add to creamed mixture. Stir in oats with a sturdy spatula and combine well.
3) Form dough into cylindrical rolls about one-and-a-half inches in diameter, wrap dough in wax paper or foil and freeze.
4) To bake, first preheat oven to 350F. Slice frozen dough into (roughly) 1/4-inch thick slices, place onto a parchment paper-lined (or greased) cookie sheet, and bake for approximately 10-12 minutes at 350F until lightly browned.

Makes about 40-50 cookies... with dough left over for eating.

Related Posts:
Mint Melts: Teaching Kids to Cook With an Easy Cookie Recipe
Cookbook Review: The Cornbread Gospels
The Muffin Blogroll: 12 Great Muffin Recipes You'll Love to Bake


How can I support Casual Kitchen?
For those readers interested in supporting Casual Kitchen, the easiest way is to do so is to do all your shopping at Amazon.com via the links on this site. You can also link to me or subscribe to my RSS feed. Finally, consider sharing this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to Facebook, Twitter (follow me @danielckoontz!) or to bookmarking sites like reddit, digg or stumbleupon. I'm deeply grateful to my readers for their ongoing support.

Mint Melts: Teaching Kids to Cook With an Easy Cookie Recipe

Cookie recipes aren't something you'll typically find here at Casual Kitchen. But after having an absolute blast assisting my 14-year-old niece in making today's Mint Melts recipe, I realized a fundamental truth: yes, cookies might not be all that healthy for you, but they are a perfect teaching tool to get your kids interested in cooking.

Think about it--cookie recipes are easy. Kids of almost any age can participate. Very young kids can do basic tasks, like measuring flour or getting eggs and butter out of the fridge. Older kids, say nine- or ten-year-olds who have already had some practice baking, can do most of a basic cookie recipe by themselves under adult supervision. And of course, people of all ages love to play with--and eat--delicious, squishy cookie dough.



Some of my most vivid childhood memories involve working with my mom in a kitchen filled with the aroma of baking cookies. And these early experiences ultimately led to my lifelong curiosity and interest in cooking.

If you have kids, try making a batch of Mint Melts with them and see how much they enjoy it. The recipe has an interesting and unusual process step that kids will love, and of course the end product is absolutely delectable. And you never know, you might inspire a future cooking genius!
**********************
Mint Melts

Ingredients:
3/4 cup margarine or butter
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
2 Tablespoons water

1 12-ounce package of semi-sweet chocolate chips
2 eggs

2 1/2 cups flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1 6-ounce package of Andes Candies

Directions:
1) Heat butter, sugar and water over low heat until the butter is fully melted. Add chocolate chips and stir until uniformly melted. Cool 10 minutes, then pour into a mixing bowl and beat in the eggs.
2) Sift together dry ingredients (except Andes Candies), then mix with the liquid ingredients. Refrigerate dough for one hour. While the dough is being refrigerated, take the Andes Candies and cut each one in half with a sharp knife.
3) Roll teaspoon-sized balls of dough and place on a greased (or foil covered) cookie sheet. Bake for 12 minutes at 350F.
4) Remove from oven and immediately top each cookie with half of an Andes mint candy. When the candy has melted on top of the cookie, swirl the mint over the top of the cookie to complete the mint frosting.

Makes 40-60 cookies, depending on size.
***************************
A couple of brief recipe notes:
1) The unique and interesting part of this recipe comes when you put the mint Andes Candies on each cookie. I'll include a few quick photos to demonstrate. And make sure you have all of the Andes Candies cut in half and ready to go ahead of time; you don't want to be scrambling to prep them after the cookies come out of the oven.

As soon as you take the cookies come out of the oven, place half an Andes candies on each cookie. Then, wait just a couple of minutes...

...and as the Andes Candies melt, take your finger and smush it around on top of the cookie:

Make sure everyone licks their fingers repeatedly during this part of the recipe--it will help your family's collective immune system.

2) I'd ruin Casual Kitchen's entire reputation as a healthy food-related blog if I didn't include a brief warning on the health detriments of cookies. So here goes: Cookies are horribly energy-dense and they should not be eaten to excess. Just a half-dozen cookies from a typical cookie recipe can add up to 400-500 calories--which means that just a few inattentive moments of mindless eating, and all of a sudden you need to do a four mile run to get back to even! These little buggers can be dangerous.

Ah, but who says you have to eat them all? Enjoy a few, but then bring the rest of 'em to the office. Let your coworkers do the four mile runs.

Related Posts:
Seven Ways to Get Faster at Cooking
How to Team Up in the Kitchen
The Favorite Cookbooks of My Favorite Bloggers
The Greatest Chocolate Mousse in the World

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by linking to me, subscribing to my RSS feed, or submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon.