I’m a fan of a chewy, damp cookie with a toffee-ish flavour, however, so I’m going to go big on brown sugar, with just enough white for that all-important crunch. I miss the thin, crisp edges that white sugar gives the other cookies in the former, and the flavour of brown in the latter, but they stand as proof that either will yield satisfactory results. There are two exceptions: Sam uses just brown sugar and Yamangil just white. That’s because it contains molasses … moisture and, because it’s slightly acidic, causes the proteins in cookie dough to firm up faster, creating a chewier texture.” Parks adds that this acid also reacts with the baking soda to give a thicker, puffier cookie, which explains why the recipes that use more brown than white sugar –as Keller, Beranbaum and Weller do – seem to spread a bit less than those that use equal parts of both, such as Ruth’s New York Times Cookbook recipe that nevertheless won the cookie contest at the 1966 Kentucky State Fair. As Fine Cooking magazine explains, the former “makes cookies moister and chewier than does white sugar. View image in fullscreen Prizewinning: the New York Times Cookbook’s oatmeal cookies.Īlmost all the recipes use a mixture of soft brown and white sugars. You’ll find this in healthfood shops, or online, or you can make it yourself by whizzing up oats in a food processor until finely ground. I don’t want mine to be too puffy, so I’m going to stick with bicarb alone, but I will, like Parks, be replacing some of the wheat flour with oat flour, for extra oaty oomph. With the exception of Yamangil, who suggests white wholewheat flour (which appears to be what we’d call wholemeal flour), all the recipes I try use the plain type, either with bicarbonate of soda (Parks, Weller, Sam, Sebastien Rouxel’s Bouchon Bakery version and “Ruth’s oatmeal crisps” from the New York Times Cookbook) baking powder (Cooks Illustrated) or both (the luxury oatmeal cookies from Rose Levy Beranbaum’s the Baking Bible) to give the cookies a bit of height. (It also makes great porridge.) The flour and raising agents You could leave it out in favour of an extra handful of rolled oats, but in my opinion it’s well worth tracking some down for this. Parks’ handful of oatmeal gives her recipe a satisfyingly nubbly, chewy texture that makes it clear who the headline star is in these cookies. View image in fullscreen Old-fashioned porridge oats are best, says Cooks Illustrated. (Note: this is not to disparage her biscuits, reverse engineered from Cape Cod’s cult Kayak Cookies’ salty oat version, which are refreshingly light in both texture and sugar content in comparison with the seven other recipes I try for this piece.)

Weller’s are certainly the most satisfying texturally, dense in a wholesome kind of a way, and less crumbly and scone-like than the similarly plump versions from Elif Yamangil of the Plenty Sweet blog, who says that, while you can chill the dough for an hour, she bakes it immediately. Melissa Weller’s recipe, from her book A Good Bake, recommends leaving it for four days before baking to achieve “the perfect texture, slightly crispy around the edges with a chewy centre”. Conversely, doughs using rolled oats, which are chunkier and only partially cooked, will benefit from being allowed to sit for a while, so they can absorb the moisture in the butter and eggs. The main difference as far as cookies are concerned is the oats’ willingness to soak up moisture: the precooked instant oats soften immediately, which means that, as Sam cautions her readers, any dough involving them should be baked immediately, before it dries out. Avoid steel-cut oats of any type” – and another, from pastry chef Stella Parks’ book BraveTart, that uses steel-cut oats as well as the rolled variety. Hoping to put this to the test, I find one highly-rated recipe using instant oats on the Buttermilk by Sam baking blog – indeed, she cautions readers that “it’s important to use the right type of oats for these … if you use old-fashioned rolled oats, the cookies will spread. Most of the recipes I try agree with the folks at Cook’s Illustrated magazine, however, that “old-fashioned rolled oats” (that is, porridge oats) have the best “texture and flavour”. View image in fullscreen Melissa Weller’s soaks her oats for four days.

Best oatmeal cookies