Tag: #stellaparks
Cookiefinity-Triple Play (Triple Oatmeal Cookies from BraveTart)

Cookiefinity-Triple Play (Triple Oatmeal Cookies from BraveTart)

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This month’s Food52 Baking Book Club features Stella Park’s BraveTart.  You may remember I previously blogged about her delicious Honey Roasted Peanut Butter Cookies and the debacle of using the printed version in People magazine.  BIG MISTAKE. About a month ago, Omnivore Books hosted Ms.Parks, being a cookbook junkie, I jumped in my car and headed to the City to attend. Got my very own SIGNED copy, uh-huh, uh-huh..doing the happy dance.

Talented dessert chef, blogger, and author of Marbled, Swirled and Layered, Irvin Lin was on hand to moderate the conversation.  Which just proves there is a conspiracy going on as I was FORCED to buy not just one new cookbook but two. Now I have to find shelf-room for his book too. Aiyah!

After her talk, I waited patiently while one woman monopolized the Q&A session (sheesh-some people), they finally picked me and I blurted out “I’m the one who tweeted about processing the honey roasted nuts” and recounted the horrible editing job of her recipe in People magazine. I think of it as a cautionary public service tale for everyone.

And with her great southern drawl (she is from Kentucky) she said: “Oh I know, I hate when they edit recipes and get it wrong!”

I was vindicated.

The book is a reflection of her, warm, friendly and gracious.  BraveTart is a love tome to iconic American treats. The book works due to her attention to detail and thoroughness.  She has reworked recipes such as Oreos and Nutter Butters and transformed them into delicious homey treats while retaining the essence of the original dessert that you remember so well from childhood. With the first bite of her Triple Oatmeal Cookie, I was immediately transported back to my 12-year-old self, reaching into the familiar pink-purple bag of Mother’s Oatmeal Cookies.

Her Triple Oatmeal Cookies are delicious, chewy, toothy cookies. The cookies contain old-fashioned oatmeal, steel cut oats and oat flour, the triple whammy of Oatsville.  Cranberries and pecans are added and provide sweetness and crunch, a scrumptious cookie. Feel free to substitute different dried fruit. Interestingly enough Stella posted that raisins will cause or allow the cookies to spread more than cranberries so keep that in mind.  Dried cherries or diced apricots would be amazing also.  Chocolate chips would, of course, work well also.

I made the dough and followed the instructions to bake the cookies on a foil-lined sheet.  To my surprise, the cookie spread was more than expected.  The first batch was thin, almost like lace cookies. Channeling America’s Test Kitchen I baked subsequent batches on parchment and then on a Silpat.  Here are the results, everyone knows a picture is worth a thousand words.

So, the cookies on the left were baked on Silpat, center- parchment, right-foil. An Ah-ha moment.  Like the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, “This cookie (right) is too thin, this one (left) is too thick, the center cookie is JUST RIGHT!” Note to self, bake these cookies on parchment.

In the end, they were all good, chewy, buttery, crispy edges and full of oat goodness. They were gobbled up.

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Cookiefinity-Triple Play (Triple Oatmeal Cookies from BraveTart)

Ingredients

  • 1 cup 2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature (not too soft)
  • ⅔ cup 5 ounces packed light brown sugar
  • ½ cup 3 ½ ounces granulated sugar
  • 1 ½ teaspoons Diamond Crystal kosher salt a bit less if you use Morton’s kosher salt, half the amount if it’s regular table salt plus additional salt (if you wish) for sprinkling
  • 1 ¼ teaspoons baking soda
  • ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
  • 1 large egg
  • ⅔ cup 3 ounces all-purpose flour
  • ¾ cup 2 ½ ounces oat flour (alternatively, grind old-fashioned rolled oats in a blender)
  • 1 ⅔ cups 6 ounces old-fashioned rolled oats (not quick-cooking)
  • ¼ cup 1 ½ ounces steel-cut oats
  • 1 ¼ cups 5 ounces toasted pecan pieces
  • 1 cup 6 ounces dried cranberries or cherries, if you use raisins the cookies will spread a bit more

Instructions

  • Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
  • In bowl of a stand mixer, combine butter, brown sugar, granulated sugar, salt, baking soda, cinnamon and vanilla. Beat until combined. Add egg and continue beating until light and creamy.
  • Whisk together flour, oat flour and both oatmeal types. Stir in pecans and cranberries. Add dry ingredients to wet and mix until just combined. Batter will be stiff.
  • Arrange portions of dough (about 1 ounce or 2 tablespoons each) onto lined baking sheets. Flatten into disks and optionally sprinkle each with a bit of kosher salt.
  • Bake in preheated oven 10 to 12 minutes, until golden brown on edges but still pale in the middle.
  • Let cool on baking sheet a few minutes and then move to a cooling rack.

Pictures from a cookbook groupie! When will I learn to hold my phone higher?
A Cautionary Tale with a Sweet Ending (Honey Roasted Peanut Butter Cookies)

A Cautionary Tale with a Sweet Ending (Honey Roasted Peanut Butter Cookies)

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I can’t resist perusing the racks at airport bookstores.  Even though I always carry an Ipad, book, or magazine, I still stop and browse. While waiting for my flight to Nashville I flipped through a copy of People Magazine that had an article with Stella Parks of Serious Eats.  Her recently published book BraveTart, an homage to iconic American desserts, was already on my radar of course. The article included a recipe for Honey Roasted Peanut Butter Cookies.  They looked and sounded delicious. Trying to be as stealthy as possible I took out my phone and quickly snapped a shot of the recipe, mission accomplished I tucked my phone back in my pocket and left to catch my flight.

Bake sale goodies, Honey Roasted Peanut Butter Cookies, Classic Chocolate Chip Cookies and as Jason calls them Double Butter Raace Krispy Treats (aka Brown Butter Salted Rice Krispy Treats)

Nuts and Butterflies

A bake sale to benefit a bird and butterfly sanctuary directly in the path of that ridiculous wall Trump wants to build was the perfect opportunity to make Park’s Honey Roasted PB Cookies.  The recipe called for processing honey roasted peanuts for a minute until finely chopped.  Uh-oh, I don’t think so, a minute in a food processor does not result in finely chopped nuts more like pulverized nuts.  Quick, to my laptop to fire off a tweet to Stella Parks..please clarify.  A couple of minutes later..yay, a response- “should be like flour, length of time variable depending on your processor”. First hurdle cleared. Surveying the recipe I noticed some of the ingredients had weights, some didn’t.  Auugh!  This started my rant to the hubster on the inconsistencies in the recipe.

Me yelling: Why would you put the weight for butter but not the flour? WTH! This is silly! And the finely chopped nuts, that wasn’t right!  Wow, and she writes for Serious Eats?!  Boy, this book has been getting a lot of press!

Hubster hears: blah, blah, blah, BLAH and nods sympathetically (I’m sure)

I continued to grumble. After making the dough I decided to look for the recipe online, lucky for me the page for her Honey Roasted Peanut Butter Cookies is available on Google.

I ATE HUMBLE PIE

My rant was misplaced.  The recipe in the book contained weights for every ingredient and the description for the peanuts was to grind them until they were fine, like flour.

So naturally, I did what anyone would do in this situation..I started to complain about People Magazine and how they messed up the recipe. The moral of the story, do not depend on a celebrity gossip magazine for a recipe.  It also gave me an excuse to add BraveTart to my cookbook collection.

I still didn’t grind the peanuts enough which I believe changed the texture of the cookie…I was fixated on the finely chopped verbiage. The cookies did not spread like traditional cookies and ended up looking like little cracked hockey pucks. I’m guessing too much flour (no weights-grrrr) I was looking for a flat, classic-looking cookie, ironically, like the picture in People magazine.

I ended up smushing each cookie like old-fashioned PB cookies.  I will definitely try these again but next time I will grind the nuts longer and weigh my flour and use the book, lol. They are YUMMY and besides, I still have half a jar of honey-roasted peanuts left! Below is the recipe from her book, BraveTart.  You should get it, it’s that good.

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2 from 1 vote

Honey Roasted Peanut Butter Cookies from BraveTart

Stella Park's Honey Roasted Peanut Butter Cookies, just make them, you'll thank me
Course cookies, Dessert
Cuisine American
Keyword Honey Roasted Peanut Butter Cookies, stella parks
Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 16 minutes

Ingredients

Dry Stuff (Flour Mixture)

  • 1 cup AP flour 4.5 ounces USE Gold Medal flour
  • 1-1/4 cups honey roasted peanuts 6 ounces

Next Step: Butters + Leavening Agents

  • 1-1/4 cups creamy peanut butter 10 ounces
  • 1 stick unsalted butter 4 ounces,soft rt cool (65 degrees use an instant thermometer)
  • 1.5 cups granulated sugar 10 ounces
  • 3/4 tsp kosher salt or half that amount if using regular table salt
  • 3/4 tsp baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp baking powder

Wet Stuff

  • 2 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1 large egg straight from fridge, well beaten
  • 3 Tbsp milk 1.5 ounces

Instructions

  • Adjust oven rack to middle position. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
  • Sift flour into bowl of a food processor (scoop and sweep method if not using a scale)
  • Add peanuts and pulse until fine (approximately 1 minute) almost like flour
  • Combine peanut butter, butter, sugar, salt, baking soda, baking powder and vanilla* in bowl of a stand mixer fitted with paddle attachment. I'm lazy, I add the vanilla to the milk and add it later.
  • Mix on low speed to moisten then increase to medium and beat until soft and light ab out 3 minutes
  • With mixer running add the egg in 2 additions, mixing untile ach is incorporated
  • Reduce speed to low and add peanut flour, followed by milk, mixing to form a very soft dough
  • Divide into 34-2 T (1.125 ounce) portions
  • Arrange on parchment lined baking sheet, 2 inches apart
  • Bake until the edges are firm and just beginning to brown but cookies are still puffy and steamy in the middle about 16 minutes
  • Cool on baking sheet until cookie is set about 10 minutes
  • Store in airtight container for up to 1 week at room temperature.