20041221

recipe: "lisa kudrow has nothing to do with these" oatmeal cookies



i'm taking cookie requests (anyone? anyone?), and thud asked me to bake oatmeal cookies so i did. he wanted chewy and raisiny, so i looked for a recipe online, because i don't normally do chewy and raisiny. one of my favourite baking resources is angela's blog, a spoonful of sugar, which is actually one of the first food blogs i ever stumbled across. for imbb10: cookie swap!, angela made the sort of oatmeal cookie that i think i was after.

the thing is, the recipe--while seemingly the one i wanted--originally came from a cookbook published in the marketing frenzy of a television show i'd rather not promote, so in the interest of non-promotion despite the possibility of sabotage, i altered the recipe just enough to make it almost not the recipe. do i hate the show that much? no, but i resent the amount of money spent on its production and i think of the better, quality shows that could have continued with the just one year of salary of one of "stars". anyway, i never really liked phoebe, but i really like lisa kudrow after seeing her in "the opposite of sex" (one of my all-time fave flicks), and i'm pretty sure she had nothing to do with the published oatmeal cookie recipe. and i'm positive she has nothing to do with this cookie, either, so hence the name.

"lisa kudrow has nothing to do with these" oatmeal cookies
adapted from ph.fab.oat.ck

1 1/2 c. (350g) unsalted butter, softened
1 lb. (454g) dark brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 tbsp vanilla extract
4 cups (340g) rolled oats
2 1/2 cups (320g) plain or all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
10 oz (283.5g) dried currants (that's one box of sun-maid® zante currants)

preheat oven to 375˚F/190˚C. cream butter and sugar until lighter and fluffy. add eggs and vanilla extract and incorporate well. combine all the dry ingredients except the currants in a separate bowl, mix well. add to the butter mixture until just combined, then fold in the currants. scoop out a heaping tablespoonful and drop onto ungreased cookie sheets, and bake for 12 to 15 minutes (i baked them for 12 on average, when i didn't forget about them because i was watching "how clean is your house?", which you should never watch when you are baking with currants because then you think a tick or a fly could fall into those cookies and no one would ever know.). cool on a rack.

despite cutting the sugar and the dried fruit by a third, they came out chewy, curranty, and delish. a little dark, though, because of the dark brown sugar, but i don't think that detracts from their loveliness.

and no, i haven't found a bug in them. yet.

2 comments:

Tick? Eeewwwwee! 'glad I don't have a dog and my bunnies are tick-free. Chewy. How about cookies with crispy on the the outside and chewy on the inside?

hi ting-aling

oh, these are crispy on the outside alright. crispy and chewy and still a lot sweet, but not overwhelmingly so. i forgot about that when i was typing this at 2am :-) reading over this post, maybe i should stop writing after midnight, huh?