Triple Oatmeal Cookies

These Triple Oatmeal Cookies are loaded with three kinds of oats, along with dried blueberries.

It's been a long time since I've made oatmeal cookies. Too long! I used to have a recipe for an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie that assuaged some of the guilt of giving my kids cookies because they contained oats. Sadly, somewhere along the way, my first recipe box, with the few recipes I ever mastered as a young mom such as my mom's meatloaf, my friend's Chinese chicken salad, and a pretty tasty tuna dip that another friend served at her Tupperware parties, disappeared.

While these Triple Oatmeal Cookies do not contain chocolate chips, they also contain enough "healthy" ingredients to make you feel like you are cancelling out the butter and sugar.

I did not bake any bread this weekend, so Mr. Kitchen improvised and had one of these cookies for breakfast. Better than cereal, right?

These cookies are loaded with three kinds of oats, including oat flour, rolled oats, and steel cut oats. They also include a generous amount of toasted pecans, as well as lots of dried blueberries.

These cookies are chewy, moist, and crunchy at the same time. They are also reminiscent of the oatmeal cookies my mom used to pack in my Sleeping Beauty lunch box for school, only way better. In fact, I have taken a lot of my baked goods to work to share, and I have never seen anything disappear as fast as these did. They are really, really good.

A few notes about the recipe: I needed to pay close attention to the cookies as they were baking. There is a fine line between perfectly baked and over baked. If you do not pull the cookies out of the oven at the right time, they will spread out into oatmeal pancakes. They will still be delicious, but not so pretty. I learned the hard way. Place close attention to how the cookies look as they are baking and catch them when they are just browning at the edges and still pale-"ish" in the center. I planted myself in front of the oven with the oven light on and pulled them out when they were ready.

I used this scale, which I love, to measure the ingredients. It's pretty much my favorite kitchen tool, and will save you so much time (and dishwashing). I also used this #30 cookie scoop to portion out the dough. The recipe calls for each cookie to weigh 1 ounce, and this cookie scoop worked perfectly for portioning the dough.

To toast the pecans, spread them out onto a sheet pan, and bake them in a 375 degree oven for about 5 to 7 minutes, until fragrant.

Triple Oatmeal Cookies with Blueberries

Ingredients

• 3 ounces (2/3 cup) all purpose flour
• 2 1/2 ounces (3/4 cup) oat flour
• 6 ounces (1 2/3 cups) rolled oats
• 1 1/2 ounces (1/4 cup) steel cut (Irish) oats
• 5 ounces (1 1/4 cups) pecan pieces, toasted
• 6 ounces (1 cup) dried blueberries (or raisins, dried cranberries, or dried cherries)
• 8 ounces (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened, at about 65 degrees F
• 5 ounces (about 2/3 cup packed) light brown sugar
• 3 1/2 ounces (1/2 cup) white sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons Diamond Crystal kosher salt, less if using Mortons
• 1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1 large egg

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F with a rack in the middle of the oven.
2. Whisk together the all purpose and oat flour in a medium bowl. Add the rolled oats, steel cut oats, pecan pieces, and blueberries, and toss with a rubber spatula.
3. In the bowl of a stand mixer, add the butter, brown sugar, white sugar, salt, baking soda, cinnamon, and vanilla. Mix with the paddle attachment on low to moisten, and then mix on medium for 30 seconds. Add the egg and continue to beat until smooth.
4. Turn off the mixer, add the dry ingredients, and stir with a spatula to barely incorporate and prevent the mixer from letting flour fly out of the mixer. Turn the mixer on to low speed and combine until just incorporated and form a stiff dough.
5. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper, and portion out 1 ounce balls of cookie dough, with 6 cookies per baking sheet. Flatten the dough into 1/2 inch thick disks. Bake for 9 to 12 minutes, until puffy and light in the middle, and just browned on the edges (see note above). Let cool on the pan for five minutes, and then move to a wire rack. Continue to bake the cookies, six at a time, until all of the cookies have been baked.
6. These cookies can be stored in an airtight container for up to two days.
7. This dough can be made and portioned in advance and refrigerated for a week, or frozen for up to 6 months.

Yield: 32 cookies

This recipe was adapted from BraveTart: Iconic American Desserts 



Here are the rest of the Back to School Recipes from my Creative Cookie Exchange Friends:

• Chocolate-Dipped Sesame Nut Bars from All That's Left Are the Crumbs
• Peanut Butter and Jelly Cookies from 2 Cookin’ Mamas
• Salted Caramel Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars from Hezzi-D's Books and Cooks
• Schoolroom Apple Cookies from What Smells So Good?
• The Nutty Professor Cookies from Our Good Life
• Triple Oatmeal Cookies from Karen's Kitchen Stories