Empty Inkwell

Matt and I spent most of our hol­i­day on Mon­day hang­ing with our friends, Bran­don and Lau­ren. After lunch, Lau­ren brought out these amaz­ing oat­meal, choco­late chip cook­ies out that she had made with her sis­ter the night before. She used a recipe that she and her sis­ter found on cookinglight.com. Yes, friends… that means these cook­ies are (a lit­tle) health­ier than your aver­age cookie, but they taste every bit as good.

The orig­i­nal recipe is for oat­meal, choco­late chip and pecan cook­ies, but she had omit­ted the pecans and made them with less sugar than the recipe calls for. Accord­ing to Cook­ing Light, the cook­ies have just 81 calo­ries each, and that’s prior to cut­ting out the pecans and extra sugar.

Of course I asked her for the recipe before leav­ing, and have been dying to make them since Mon­day. Last night I bought all the ingre­di­ents, and this after­noon I started bak­ing. I, too, decided to leave out the pecans, but added a lit­tle more sugar than Lau­ren did. Still absolutely deli­cious, but as crazy as this sounds (espe­cially com­ing from a girl who LOVES sweets and treats), I kinda pre­ferred the less sugar ver­sion! I also used regular-sized choco­late chips, rather than the minis as sug­gested below.

Here’s the orig­i­nal recipe for those of you who’d like to try them with pecans:

Ingre­di­ents:
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour (about 5 1/2 ounces)
1 cup reg­u­lar oats
3/4 tea­spoon bak­ing pow­der
1/2 tea­spoon bak­ing soda
1/2 tea­spoon salt
3/4 cup gran­u­lated sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/3 cup but­ter, soft­ened
1 1/2 tea­spoons vanilla extract
1 large egg
1/4 cup chopped pecans, toasted
1/4 cup semi­sweet choco­late minichips

Pre­heat oven to 350°.
Lightly spoon flour into dry mea­sur­ing cups; level with a knife. Com­bine flour and next 4 ingre­di­ents (through salt), stir­ring with a whisk; set aside.
Place sug­ars and but­ter in a large bowl; beat with a mixer at medium speed until well blended. Add vanilla and egg; beat until blended. Grad­u­ally add flour mix­ture, beat­ing at low speed just until com­bined. Stir in pecans and minichips. Drop dough by table­spoon­fuls 2 inches apart onto bak­ing sheets lined with parch­ment paper. Bake at 350° for 12 min­utes or until edges of cook­ies are lightly browned. Cool on pans 2 min­utes. Remove cook­ies from pans; cool on wire racks. Makes 3 dozen cookies.

Lauren’s adjust­ments: omit pecans and use ¾ cups brown sugar and omit gran­u­lated sugar completely.

Make a batch tonight, and enjoy. And thanks, Lau­ren, for shar­ing your yummy recipe find!