It might be my Scottish heritage, but I have a tiny obsession with oatmeal cookies. Since by 'tiny obsession' I mean 'can eat them by the plateful' I went on a quest to create a less calorie-laden version. My husband ate many batches. Some he devoured, some he suffered through (the man won't throw out a cookie.) But I learned and have created my own love letter to oatmeal cookies.
There's tons of recipes out there for healthy oatmeal cookie recipes, but it wasn't until I tried them that I realized what makes a proper oatmeal cookie:
1. The taste and texture base should be chewy oats. That seems incredibly obvious, but many recipes take out most of the fat and cholesterol (eggs) and therefore need to add more flour make the batter stay in a cohesive cookie shape. This makes the cookie thick and cake-like, but in a very dense way.
2. The base holding the oats together should have a quality like caramelized sugar - thick, rich, sweet and chewy. When an oatmeal cookie bends, it shouldn't snap or crumble into many pieces (too dry) - it should gently bend.
3. The aftertaste of my ideal oatmeal cookie is a slightly sweet, buttery taste.
So, with all this in mind, the traditional light cookie replacing the butter and egg with fruit purees like applesauce or banana didn't work. The buttery taste wasn't there, replaced by one that didn't belong. Too much flour was required. I found the perfect recipe (with a few tweaks of my own added) in The Best Light Recipe from the editors of Cook's Illustrated.
What makes it work:
Real butter, for the taste and texture, but less of it. The use of a leavening agent and a small amount of flour kept the cookie from getting too dense and cakey. Brown sugar kept the cookie moist and one egg meant that the additional flour wasn't needed to bind. Baking on parchment lined paper and letting the cookies firm up out of the oven helped the moist factor as well.
The recipe (tweaked from Cook's Illustrated The Best Light Recipe)
Perfect Oatmeal Cookies
Makes 12 cookies
1 cup old-fashioned oats
3/4 cup all purpose flour
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
4 tbsp unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 large egg
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 cup packed brown sugar
Bake on middle rack at 325 degrees.
Whisk oats, flour, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt together in a small bowl.
In a large bowl whisk together butter, egg, and vanilla. Stir in brown sugar. Stir in oatmeal mixture until no flour pockets remain- don't overmix.
On a parchment lined baking tray, bake cookies for 13 minutes. They're ready to come out of the oven when they've spread and puffed and have browned very slightly on top. If you try to lift up the cookie it should start to break into about three large pieces. Let the cookies cool to room temperature on the baking tray. They'll have melded into oatmeal heaven.
