Published January 1, 2008. From Cook's Illustrated.
We wanted to enhance the standard oatmeal cookie recipe to create a crispy, delicate cookie in which the flavor of buttery oats would really stand out. Scaling back the sugar while increasing the amounts of baking powder and baking soda gave us oatmeal cookies that were crisp but not tough.
A dusting of salt atop sweets such as chocolate and caramel is nothing new, but we recently came across Kayak Cookies, which gives a different item the salt treatment: their Salty Oats cookies. After sprinkling a few grains on our Thin and Crispy Oatmeal Cookies, we were hooked. Similar to its effect on caramel, salt's contrasting flavor adds a new dimension to the cookies and accentuates their rich, buttery taste. We prefer the texture and flavor of a coarse-grained sea salt, like Maldon or fleur de sel, but kosher salt can be used. If using kosher salt, reduce the amount sprinkled over the cookies to 1/4 teaspoon. To ensure that the cookies bake evenly and are crisp throughout, bake them 1 tray at a time. Place them on the baking sheet in 3 rows, with 3 cookies in the outer rows and 2 cookies in the center row. If you reuse a baking sheet, allow the cookies on it to cool at least 15 minutes before transferring them to a wire rack, then reline the sheet with fresh parchment before baking more cookies. We developed this recipe using Quaker Old Fashioned Rolled Oats. Other brands of old-fashioned oats can be substituted but may cause the cookies to spread more. Do not use instant or quick- cooking oats.
Dear Friend,
These days, it’s pretty easy to get free recipes on the Internet. I’m sure a search for “roast chicken recipe” will turn up thousands and thousands. But, as with so much on the web, you should tread lightly if you don’t know the source.
In America’s Test Kitchen, our motto is, “Recipes that Work,” and our mission is to be your trusted source for recipes that work every time you use them. Our test cooks spend their days obsessively testing recipes until they offer consistently great results. As we like to say here, “We make the mistakes so you don’t have to.”
CooksIllustrated.com is the only place you can find not only 20 years' worth of our foolproof recipes, but also objective ratings of cookware, and blind taste tests for hundreds of everyday supermarket ingredients (hey, without the proper ingredients and equipment you can still run into problems — no matter how good the recipe).
Let me make a simple, no-nonsense offer. Try out our website FREE for a 14-Day, No-Hassle Trial Offer. I’m pretty confident that CooksIllustrated.com will quickly become an invaluable resource for everything from quick, weeknight suppers to huge, holiday feasts for family and friends.
Thanks for your consideration,
Christopher Kimball
Founder and Publisher
