Inquiries in Food

Oatmeal cookies with Orange, Cranberry, Chocolate, and Almond

My mum is a baking mastermind.  She makes the most amazing pies, the moistest brownies, the richest coffee cakes, and occasionally she makes cookies as well.  As a baker’s son, I’ve always viewed cookies as a mundane thing that everyone does; I guess that’s just because the only baking I do consists of a batch or two of cookies. This time, her cookies ascended to a level of deliciousness I had only thought possible in meat products.  No they weren’t sirloin cookies, unfortunately; they were oatmeal cookies, modified to contain orange zest, cranberries, chocolate, and almonds, with a delightful orange glaze over the top.  It’s one of the most interesting cookies I’ve eaten, and that’s saying a lot considering the amount of cookies I’ve shoved in my mouth in my 19 years of existence on this planet.  Yeah, I know you’re probably skipping most of this text to get to the recipe to bake the delicious looking cookies you see above, but I don’t blame you.

Ingredients:

-1/2 cup butter, unsalted
-1/2 cup shortening
-2 eggs
-1 3/4 teaspoons vanilla
-zest of 2 oranges
-1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
-1 teaspoon baking soda
-1 teaspoon cinnamon
-3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
-3 cups rolled oats, not instant
-1 cup dried cranberries
-1 cup chopped almonds
-1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
-2 cups powdered sugar
-juice of about half an orange 

Method:

Cream together the butter, shortening, eggs, vanilla, and orange zest.  In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon.  Add the dry to the creamed mixture, stirring constantly.  Stir in the rolled oats, cranberries, almonds, and chocolate.  Chill the dough overnight.

Use a ice cream scoop to form the dough.  Place the dough balls on a parchment lined baking sheet.  Use the palm of your hand to push the dough down into the shape of a thick hockey puck.  Bake at 350 for about 11 minutes, rotating the sheet halfway through.  Let them sit on the baking sheet for about 5 minutes before transferring them to a cooling rack.

Make a glaze by stirring together the powdered sugar and the orange juice.  Modify the amount of juice depending on how thick it is.  Ideally, the glaze should fall back on itself in ribbons if suspended in the air on a spoon.  After the cookies have cooled for 10 minutes on the cooling rack, glaze the top.  Make sure to put some foil under the cooling rack to catch the drips.  Let the glaze set for 20 minutes.