Scotch Companion Cookies

Photo: Jessica Blanche

Ingredients

2 sticks of butter, softened at room temperature

1/2 cup baking sugar (granulated sugar)

1 cup packed, brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla paste

3 tablespoons molasses

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

2 whole eggs+ 1 egg yolk

2 1/2 cups old fashioned oatmeal

2 cups flour

1/2 cup malted milk powder

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

2 cups chocolate chips (milk or semisweet depending on your preference, or go crazy and

1 cup peanut butter chips (the Reeses kind preferably)

Preparation

With your electric mixer, beat together the butter and sugars until fluffy. Add the vanilla paste, molasses,vinegar and eggs. Beat until incorporated, scraping sides of bowl once. Sift together the dry ingredients and add slowly to the mixer 1 cup at a time until incorporated. Fold in chocolate and peanut butter chips. At this point, if you’re in a hurry, you can start baking them right away and you’ll get a flatter cookie (like those in the picture). If you have a little more time, putting the dough in the freezer for half an hour makes a difference in the density of your final product. Place the dough on a cookie sheet by the heaping spoonful, at least 3-4 inches apart depending on the size of your spoonfuls, they’ll spread. Bake them for 12 minutes or until the edges beg

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About

There are some fundamental differences that make up a person. Choices that become habits that become doctrine and sit at the essence of your soul: Democrat or republican. Plain or peanut. Dark or milk. Cookies or cake or brownies or pie or ice cream or…do NOT say fruit. Unless it’s fruit dipped in chocolate on top of a slice of cheesecake.

I’m an equal opportunity dessert lover. Unless I’m forced into a corner, and then there’s not a cookie’s chance in a carb-starved hell that I won’t choose the brownies. Case in point, I’m supposed to be writing about cookies and now all I can think about it how badly I want a brownie. This is going to be a problem. Anyway…

My family is big on cookies. At Christmas time my grandmother’s kitchen will look like the Keebler Elves have moved in and multiplied like rabbits in order to accommodate the new production schedule. One of the traditional favorites are my mom’s chocolate chip cookies, which disappear almost as fast as she can make them. Perfectly golden with a high ratio of chips to dough, they were tough to beat. In fact, they were so tough to beat that despite all my fondness for coloring outside the lines of recipes, I’d never so much as dared to adjust more than the shades of brown sugar much less use a different recipe entirely. Until now.

While experimenting with malted waffles on Sunday (which I won’t talk about here because they were “good” but not “as good as…” according to CJ who hopefully enjoyed those “good” waffles because they were likely his last…I am nothing if not open to constructive criticism) it occurred to me that the malted milk powder might make an interesting addition to other pastries. We’d been invited to a 4th of July party at a friend’s house the next day, and I had volunteered to bring dessert. When it comes to ease of transportation and consumption, by a bunch of sparkler toting drunken revelers, the cookie is the clear winner. However, then enters the dilemma of which kind… I wanted chocolate (of course!), the chewiness of a traditional oatmeal, and the saltiness of peanut butter. The only reasonable solution was to make them all. A cookie that would unite all cookies…The only way it might get better is when I add bacon next time. What?! Too much?!

By the way, forget the milk, these taste particularly delicious with scotch…