Sunday, September 14, 2008

Kitchen Sink Cookies


I think everyone needs a recipe like this -- a good cookie designed to use up all the random half-empty bags of chips, nuts, or whatever else you have in your cookie drawer leftover from other recipes. This recipe is designed to hold some chunks, and it does it very well. I had a half bag of chocolate chips, another half bag of butterscotch chips as well as some mini chocolate chips and just a handful of toffee bits and all of those bags got dumped into the dough along with rice krispies, oatmeal, and coconut.

The oatmeal and coconut keep the cookies chewy and soft, the rice krispies offer a nice crinkle and crack as you chew them, and the nuts offer crunch and contrasting texture. Oh, and all the chips of course. :) The main flavor is butterscotch and chocolate chips since those are the ones I had the most of, but every now and again you get a little bit of toffee which offers its own unique crunch and flavor. mmmm...

Naturally, these exact cookies will be impossible to duplicate since next time they could have a completely different assortment of chips and chunks depending on what I have in my kitchen and what I think will go together -- somehow I think I will probably avoid a peanut butter chip/cinnamon chip combination, but that's just me.

I pulled the recipe from my Sticky, Chewy book and the only change I made below is halving the recipe. But why are there bar cookies in the picture you ask? Even halving the recipe there was a LOT of cookie dough to be used up and I kept eating chunks of it. To prevent myself from eating way too much of it, I pressed about half of it into a 9x9 square pan and baked them at 325 for 20-25 minutes. Crisis averted.

The bars were thicker and chewier than the cookies of course, but either way they are yummy and great for the chunky cookie lovers out there.




Ingredients:
1.5 cups walnuts or pecans toasted
1 cup (2 sticks) butter at room temp
1 cup packed dark brown sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
2 tsps vanilla extract
2 cups all purpose flour
1.5 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
2 cups rice cereal such as rice krispies
1 cup coconut
2 cups oatmeal
1.5 cups chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350 and line cookie sheets with parchment paper or silpats. (I prefer insulated cookie sheets)

Cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl until light and creamy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition, then add the vanilla and mix until blended in.

Add the flour, baking soda and salt and mix just until incorporated. In another bowl mix the cereal, coconut, oatmeal and chips (any combination of chips will work) and stir them together. Add that mixture to the dough and blend until thoroughly incorporated.

Scoop tablespoonfuls of dough onto the prepared cookie sheets and bake 12 to 15 minutes or until done.

2 comments:

burkie said...

quite good, as long as you aren't getting rid of leftover chocolate stuff and leftover fruit stuff in the same cookie :)

Keely said...

Sis, these are very good. Rebekah and I made them yesterday. They taste good in dough form, warm cookie form and one day old form. I doubt if we will know if they taste good in two day old form. The one thing I did different is toast the oatmeal at 350 F for 20 minutes, stirring at the 10 minute mark. You should try toasting your oatmeal before putting it in your cookie dough, it really does make a difference.