Oatey Oats

I found a recipe on Bakerella's website (love her!) recently that appealed to me. It had pink M&M's in it, how could I not like it? However, my problem was the oats. I'm not a fan of oats, or porridge, or anything that has oats in it to be honest. They make things grainey and too chewy. But the allure of pink m&m's and chocolate chips made me want to try these anyway. And having made them, it may be the start of my conversion to the Oat side!

Now I live in Ireland, so it's difficult to get individual coloured M&M's, so I just used regular M&M's. But you'll see that below. As you can also see, I cooked them a little too long, and they got a little dark. But it's the brown sugar, it makes the dough darker so unlike a normal cookie mix, you can't say cook until golden brown. Wasn't sure they were done, so left them another 2 minutes. That was my mistake. A little too dark on the bottom. BUT, they still tasted gorgeous! So I may become a convert to oats yet. Any suggestions for other oatey recipes that aren't overkilled with oats?

The recipe I used is in cups, but I'm going to convert it and I will update it on here once I've figured it out properly. I also really like this recipe because it's so easy!!

Cowboy Cookies

Ingredients

Finished product.

• 1 1/3 cups plain flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 cup oats (I used plain porridge oats and they worked fine)
• 3/4 cup M&M's
• 3/4 cup choc-chips (I used Milk, but dark or white would probably work well too)
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup caster sugar.
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 tsp vanilla.

How to:

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Line or grease your baking tray.

Uncooked dough. Odd looking.

Mix all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Add the three wet ingredients and beat until combined. Sadly, yes you may need to use your hands to get it to stick together properly. It feels weird, almost like a hand scrub (guess that's the oats!), and it looks weird, but it's worth it.

Break off chunks of dough, roll them into balls and put on baking tray. Flatten slightly with your hand (or the bottom of a floured glass, anything that will squish them a bit), and bake in the hot oven for 10 minutes. Don't do like I did and give them that extra two minutes just in case. Unless of course there's dough still visible.

Before.

Options:  Good both warm and cold. They get harder and chewier when cold. But that may be because they were slightly overdone. And, weirdly, for a self confessed chocaholic, there was a bit too much chocolate in these for me. So I might reduce the chocolate to half cups, instead of 3/4's.

Suggestion: Take two, dollop some of your favourite ice-cream inbetween them and Ta-Dah!! Home made ice cream sandwich!


As with all recipes, it's trial and error. I like to stick to the recipe I'm using the first time I try it, so I can then alter it once tasted to suit me own tastes.