Nutty for Oats Cookies

I probably didn't need it, and I certainly could have lived without it, but I bought myself a new cook book today -- The King Arthur Flour Whole Grains Baking book. Several other food bloggers that I read have that book and have made recipes from it and everyone who talks about the book seems to love it, so when I saw it at the bookstore today, and I saw the price, I decided it would make a fine addition to my collection.

While I refuse to sacrifice flavor in my baked goods for calories I am all for great-tasting baked goods that happen to feature lots of whole grains and fiber. One of the great things about the book is that it provides nutrition information for everything, which means for those of us who are trying to watch what we eat, we have a better idea how many calories are actually in what we are eating. This book also doesn't seem to care as much about calorie counts -- it is NOT a diet book -- but rather, it cares about featuring whole grains in food that tastes good. Life is too short to eat food that tastes bad, but if I can have a great-tasting, home-made cookie that has a gram of fiber and 7 grams of whole-grain, I'm all for it.

Now, on to the cookies. They were actually quite good, but when I saw the description of the cookies -- peanut butter, oatmeal, and chocolate chips -- I was expecting a more complicated flavor combination. Instead, they taste like a normal chocolate chip cookie. I could barely detect peanut butter in the background and the oatmeal was hardly noticeable. While I was eating a cookie, I actually wanted a nice crunchy pecan or walnut to change the texture a bit.

It's also interesting to note that there is no flour in this recipe -- ground up oatmeal provides the bulk of the dry ingredients. I have a hunch that's why the cookie dough was a bit crumbly for cookies, but it wasn't that difficult to work with. I measured the cookies using a tablespoon measuring spoon, but the cookies don't spread much and I nearly burnt the first batch. With the second batch I measured a bit more -- about a tablespoon and a half -- and I flattened the dough a bit on the cookie sheet to help them bake evenly. The crumbly texture of the dough didn't help matter much and I had to press them back together after I flattened them, but again, I've worked with more difficult cookie dough.

Ingredients

2/3 cup smooth peanut butter
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
3/4 cup packed light or dark brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
2 large eggs
1 cups old-fashioned rolled oats, ground for 30 seconds in a food processor
1 1/2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
2 cups chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350. Lightly grease 2 baking sheets or line with parchment paper.

Cream the peanut butter, butter, sugar, vanilla, salt and baking soda in a medium bowl. Beat in the eggs, scraping the bowl once they're incorporated, then add the ground oats, old-fashioned rolled oats and chocolate chips Drop the dough by tablespoonfuls onto the prepared baking sheets.

Bake the cookies, reversing the pans midway through (top to bottom, bottom to top) until barely set and just beginning to brown around the edges 11 to 13 minutes. Remove the cookies from the oven and let them cool completely on the pans.

Yield: 38 cookies

Nutrition information per serving (1 cookie, 29G): 7g whole grains, 131 cal, 7g fat, 3g protein, 5g complex carbohydrates, 10g sugar, 1g dietary fiber, 14mg cholesterol, 64mg sodium, 99mg potassium