Flat but Tasty

So yesterday I made Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies. This was first time I'd made them from scratch without simply modifying one of my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipes. They came out really good, but oddly flat, and the first tray more than the rest. This was another adventure in the Williams-Sonoma Baking Cookbook, and I simply refuse to give up on this book because I love their chocolate chip scone recipe. Let's get to the recipe itself, shall we?

Makes: about 60 cookies (I got 58)
Total Time: recipe in the "30 minutes Start to Finish" section of the book

1 cup unsalted butter
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup light brown sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
12 oz. semisweet or bittersweet chocolate chips
1 cup walnuts, toasted and chopped (optional)

1. Position a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 350 degrees. Line 2 rimless baking sheets with parchment paper.

2. In a large bowl, using an electric mixer on medium speed, beat the butter and granulated and brown sugars until creamy. Add the eggs and vanilla and beat until smooth. In another bowl, stir together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and beat on low until smooth. Stir in the oatmeal, chocolate chips, and walnuts, if using.

3. Drop rounded tablespoonfuls of the dough onto the prepared sheets, spacing them about 1 1/2 inches apart. Bake until the cookies are golden brown, 10-12 minutes. Transfer the cookies to wire racks to cool completely.

Okay, now the recipe doesn't specify that the butter should be softened, but I've never seen a recipe call for creaming that didn't use softened butter. In fact, I don't even know if this is possible. So I softened my butter. I also put my mixing bowl in the freezer for about 10 minutes before using it, which is something I do for another cookie recipe but haven't done in a while. I've been doing (and not doing) it so long that I don't even remember why I started, and even the power of the internet couldn't answer me. Perhaps this was the reason for my flat cookies? Even if it is, why don't my other chocolate chip cookies wind up flat when I do this? Well, it's something to consider for next time, that's for sure.

Next, I didn't use walnuts. I like them, I even like them in my chocolate chip cookies, but I just wasn't feeling them for this. Also, I have other applications in mind for my walnuts. (Coffee cake anyone?) I also used semisweet chips mixed with milk chocolate because, as previously mentioned, I prefer the sweeter chips even in my cookies. (If you're looking for a dark chocolate girl, I'm not it.) Of course, you can use whatever kind of chocolate chips you want. That's the beauty of baking! I also used an extra ounce of chocolate chips because I didn't want to leave 1 ounce of chips in a bag and the dough looked a little thin on chips.

All right, onto putting the cookie dough onto the pan! I put them in tablespoon-sized blobs, as instructed, the popped the pan into the oven. Halfway through baking, my cookies were already getting flat and looked a bit runny. I was concerned, but I stuck with it and finished out their baking time. Now they were definitely flat. As in, looking at them you'd expect them to be crunchy. Thankfully, though, they were still chewy, but they certainly did not go off to work with my husband this morning.

For the next tray, I decided to try something different. I've been doing so many recipes recently that involve rolling the dough in sugar of one kind or another, so I decided to try rolling these in powdered sugar to see if it would add a little resistance and help them hold shape to look more like the cookies I was going for. I figured if it didn't work that I'd only "wasted" 12 out of about 60 cookies, so no harm done. To my joy, it actually worked quite well. The cookies still came out a bit flatter than I would have liked, but they certainly looked better than the first batch. And the "extra" sugar didn't change the taste, which was my only other concern.

So, all in all, it was a good baking day yesterday. Will I use this recipe again? Well, the cookies all came out tasty and chewy, even if they were flat, so probably. But I'll also keep looking for another recipe to see if I can achieve the trifecta of tasty, chewy, and not flat. I'll also try this one again without putting the mixing bowl in the freezer first to see if that fixes my issues.

Having baking successes of your own? Let me know! And, as always, feel free to comment with recipe recommendations, favorite memories that involve baking, or favorite holiday memories. (If you can combine all of these, I'll be amazed and excited.)