Peanut Butter-Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

Cookie fail.

I had volunteered to make cookies for a weekend trip to Gatlinburg. My cookies have always gone over well with this particular group of people, so I decided to try a new recipe. From my cookie idol, Martha Stewart, no less.

Utter aesthetic fail.

The Recipe:

Ingredients

·         3 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
·         1/3 cup whole wheat flour
·         1 teaspoon baking soda
·         1 teaspoon baking powder
·         1/2 teaspoon coarse salt
·         1 cup packed light-brown sugar
·         1 cup granulated sugar
·         1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
·         1/2 cup natural peanut butter
·         2 large eggs
·         1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
·         2 cups salted whole peanuts
·         2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Directions

1.      Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Stir together oats, flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl; set aside.
2.      Put sugars, butter, and peanut butter in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix on medium speed until pale and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Mix in eggs and vanilla.
3.      Reduce speed to low. Add oat mixture, and mix until just combined. Mix in peanuts and chocolate chips.
4.      Using a 1 1/2-inch ice cream scoop, drop balls of dough 2 inches apart on baking sheets lined with parchment paper.
5.      Bake cookies, rotating sheets halfway through, until golden brown and just set, 13 to 15 minutes. Let cool on sheets on wire racks 5 minutes. Transfer cookies to wire racks to cool completely. Cookies can be stored in airtight containers at room temperature up to 2 days.

How they were supposed to turn out

Now.

I was not about to go out and buy an entire jar of natural peanut butter for my recipe. I think natural peanut butter is gross so the rest of the jar would be wasted. I used regular old off-brand crunchy peanut butter because that’s what I had.

I’m also not cool enough to own an “electric mixer fitted with paddle attachment”. Read KitchenAid stand mixer. Really. So I just used the same mixer I always use, the one my mom got me at a yard sale that occasionally sparks when I plug it in. It works fine. Same with the ice cream scoop. Two spoons do just as good a job.

Where my fail started was with the butter.

Oh, butter.

I don’t use a lot of butter, so I had not purchased sticks of it for my new apartment. I had tub margarine. And really, if I use then interchangeably in my life, why should I be able to use them interchangeably in baking?

Because, genius, there’s more oil.

I measured out how much "butter" I needed, but I thought the batter seemed too wet before I scooped out the cookies. I added some more oats.

Still fail.

Now, I learned a while ago that when a recipe calls for you to use parchment paper, nothing else will do. So I definitely didn’t substitute anything for that. And it’s a good thing I didn’t.

 When I put the cookie sheets in the oven, I had 12 small mounds of batter.

When I took the cookie sheets out of the oven, I had one large cookie the size and shape of a cookie sheet.

           
Yeah, I wasn’t lying about the fail.

Now, in my defense, the cookies still tasted delicious and I will definitely make them again. It’s just they were more like a brittle than a cookie.

But next time, I will not substitute margarine for butter.

What silly substitution have you made in a recipe?

Conclusion: Use butter.

Potential variation: Instead of peanut butter and peanuts, Nutella and hazelnuts.