Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

This week, I wanted to make birthday cookies for a friend at work. Her favorite were oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, so I decided to give it a go.

My oatmeal cookies have never turned out well--always too dry or too healthy-tasting (seriously, not a good thing for cookies.) I started making the basic oatmeal cookies from joy of cooking but then realized that SOMEBODY had used the rest of my brown sugar. Ehem. Thankfully, I had something else that was brown and sweet: molasses. It brought some much-needed flavor and moisture to the cookies. I might still tinker with the ratio of sugar to molasses, but here's what I did--it was quite a hit!

This is a half recipe (~24 cookies), but makes plenty for 5 people to enjoy for a couple of days.

Preheat oven to 350.
Cream ~1 stick unsalted butter
Add 1/2c + 2T sugar and 1/4c molasses, continue to beat
Add 1 egg and 1 1/4 t vanilla, beat more
Stop the mixer
Add 3/4c flour + 2T all purpose flour, 3/4t baking powder, 1/4t salt, and 1/4t cinnamon.
Mix around lightly with a finger (or a fork, if you're feeling sanitary), then mix on low until just combined
Then, add 1 3/4c oats (not instant), a scant 1/2c pecans, and a generous 1c chocolate chips.
Stir until incorporated.
Spoon onto a greased cookie sheet

Cook for 12-14 minutes until they lookin' good. Don't be shy about taking them out if they still look a little moist, you don't want to completely dry them out

Daquiris come in mango, too!

M. just made me a mango daquiri and it was fabulous!! I highly recommend it. He followed the recipe exactly except he used frozen pineapple instead of pineapple juice and upped the rum to 1/2 cup.

Leeks in the crockpot

A simple post. If you slice leeks and leave them in the crockpot on high for 5 or 6 hours, they seem almost to caramelize. Suzanne had some of the resulting leek pie today - - just the leeks, some egg beaters poured on top of them after I put them in a bread-dough-lined casserole, and red peppers on top, cooked for 40 min. They would have been better with some hummus, but they were good nonetheless.