Announcement & Cookies for Everyone!
I have some exciting news and want to share it with you all. Hopefully, from reading my site over the past few years, you’ve had the opportunity to see that I have an incredible passion for culture, food and cooking. I love bringing together all of the travels and experiences that make up my life – combining flavors, textures, techniques and ingredients into my own personal style of cooking. I’ve recently signed on to do my first cookbook! I’m extremely thrilled (and a bit nervous, honestly…) to bring together and share the flavors of my Exotic Table in a lasting work, and over the next six months I’ll be cooking, writing, and photographing each step of the process. As you can imagine, my creative resources will be dedicated to the book, but I hope to share with you the experiences, inspirations and trials and tribulations here (p.s. I will from time to time to post interesting recipes you won’t be able to find in the book).
I want to thank you all for your continued support! None of this would be possible without the feedback and confidence I receive from you guys. As a token of my appreciation, I want to share with you my most treasured, secret, best cookie recipe ever! I’m a huge fan of how oatmeal changes the texture of a cookie and the combination of that with some dark chocolate and a touch of cinnamon and salt is heavenly… Enjoy!
Ingredients
Yields approximately 2 dozen cookies (size-dependent)
¾ cup all-purpose flour
½ tsp baking soda
¼ tsp baking powder
½ tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp salt
1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature*
¼ cup shortening
1/3 cup white sugar
½ cup light brown sugar
1 egg, room temperature
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 ¼ cup dark chocolate chunks or chips
1 cup oats**
Procedure
Preheat oven to 350° F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
In a bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon and salt.
In the bowl of a stand mixer or with a hand mixer using a paddle attachment, cream together butter, shortening and both sugars. Add the egg and vanilla extract. Add flour mixture and mix until almost completely incorporated. It should mostly be sticking to the paddle at this point. Scrape down, add in chips and oats and mix for another 15 to 20 seconds until uniform.
At this point, I like to turn the cookie dough out onto plastic wrap, form into a cylinder, and freeze for about 10 minutes. This makes it easier to cut into even sized, round cookies. Conversely, you can just drop rounded spoonfuls a few inches apart onto prepared baking sheets.
Bake for 9 to 11 minutes depending on how chewy or crunchy or what size you made the cookies. Cool on the baking sheets for 5 minutes and then transfer to wire racks to cool completely.
*If you are feeling extra ambitious, browning the butter (heating the butter over medium heat until the foam subsides, little brown flecks appear in the bottom of the pan and it smells like hazelnuts) is a great step to add depth of flavor. Just cool down before the creaming step.
**Quick-cooking oats are fine here.