Week 2 - Oatmeal Raisin Cookies (Page 32) and TLCs (Page 33)

Hope everyone had a wonderful week!

Since this is such a long post, I'm going to give you the little shortcuts to skip to whatever you might be interested in.

To skip my intro and get to the Oatmeal Raisin Cookies, click here.
To jump to the TLCs, click here.
To jump to my Oatmeal Blueberry Cookie variation, click here.
To skip all my babble and get to the conclusion, click here.

Jenn broke out her camera and got some awesome shots for her post! Check out her take on the Oatmeal Raisin and TLC cookies here.

This week, Jenn and I decided it would be a good idea to tackle two cookie recipes - the Oatmeal Cookie and TLC - because they're fairly similar in terms of ingredients and process. Although the cookies are fairly similar, you'll see how differently they can turn out due to small changes such as slightly different ingredient ratios or baking conditions.

Doing this project with Jenn is so much fun. I'm not good at baking cookies. I almost always overbake them because I don't want them to be raw and then end up underbaking the next batch. Being a baker who can't bake cookies is very frustrating and embarrassing 😓.

This time, I tried my best not to overbake them but got frustrated because they turned out *so* dark every time. They looked like they were burnt! Luckily, Jenn kept me sane and I eventually stopped trying to fix my not-burnt-but-looked-burnt cookies. I'm so looking forward to baking something I can poke with a toothpick to test for doneness 😂.

"Oatmeal Raisin Cookies" - The original recipe

These cookies were such a frustrating cookie for me to make. I'm a perfectionist and no matter what I did, they didn't look the way they do in the photo in the book. Regardless of their appearance, they were still tasty.

I baked this cookie a few different ways: weight (large cookies were 145g each and small cookies were 45g each), convection oven setting and standard oven setting. All the raisins used were soaked for 30 minutes in hot water. I drained the water but didn't pat them dry because...I didn't see the instructions to pat them dry until I started typing this post 😅.

My observations:

These cookies spread *a lot*.
These cookies become very dark even if you take them out as soon as they're baked.
The instructions don't tell you to flatten these cookies like they do with the Pecan Sandies. I overlooked this and flattened the first batch a little. Bad idea.
Baking these cookies with the standard oven setting seemed to make them spread more than the convection setting.

My fellow guinea pig, H, and a few others sampled these cookies with me.

Our conclusions:

The cookie is a little heavy on the cinnamon for most but tolerable for others.
The dark colour of the baked cookie gives it almost a nutty flavour.
The texture of the cookie is surprising because we expected something as solid as a rock judging only by the colour. We were pleasantly surprised that the outsides were crispy and the middle stayed chewy.
The larger cookies crumbled and were almost cakey. The smaller version held together better like a cookie should and had a less cakey texture to them.
Convection baking was preferred because the cookies spread a little less than on the standard oven setting.

Photos of the Oatmeal Raisin Cookie baking:

Photos of the Oatmeal Raisin Cookie post-bake:

Top left: 145g, standard bake, flattened. Top right: 145g, standard bake, not flattened. Middle left and right: 145g, convection bake. Bottom left: 45g, convection bake. Bottom right: 45g, standard bake.

"TLCs" - The original recipe

These cookies were such a delight to make after struggling with the Oatmeal Raisin Cookies so much. They actually looked like a cookie when they came out of the oven! Redemption!! TLC is short for The Laura Cunningham, a cookie created by Sebastien Rouxel for Thomas Keller's partner because she doesn't like dried fruit. Essentially, this is an Oatmeal Pecan Cookie.

I baked all the TLCs using the convection setting because I preferred the way the Oatmeal Raisin Cookies came out on that setting and the ingredients and process were similar enough that both settings seemed unnecessary. Following the Oatmeal Cookie sizes, the large cookies were 145g each and small cookies were 45g each. Learning from the Pecan Sandies recipe, I toasted the pecans even though it doesn't specify to do so.

I baked these cookies after refrigerating the dough for 30 minutes as per the instructions in the book but also tried baking them straight out of the fridge after storing them overnight because I didn't have time to bake them all the same day.

My observations:

These cookies actually look like cookies - round and not flat!
There's a lot less cinnamon in this recipe compared to the Oatmeal Raisin Cookies - 1g versus 7g.
No salt in this recipe, like the Pecan Sandies.
These cookies look much better and bake more evenly when the dough goes into the oven at room temperature.
These cookies actually bake better as the 145g size because the 45g size bakes a little flat, but definitely not as flat as the Oatmeal Raisin Cookies.

My fellow guinea pig, H, and a few others sampled these cookies with me.

Our conclusions:

This cookie didn't wow anyone. They were decent cookies but not the type that people couldn't stop eating. There weren't really any comments about this cookie.
There wasn't much of a chew to this cookie. It was more like a bite to bite through and not much chewiness after that - almost like the butter cookies you get in tins at Christmas.
Toasting the pecans was definitely worth it. The cookie wouldn't have had much flavour otherwise.
The nuts didn't do much for the cookie in terms of texture. It was almost like it was there just so that the cookie had something in it other than just dough and oatmeal.
Definitely let these cookies come to room temperature before baking them. They were very dense, thick and a little off in the middle when they were baked straight from the fridge

Photos of the TLCs baking:

Photos of the TLCs post-bake:

Oatmeal Blueberry Cookies! - My variation

I'm not a big fan of cinnamon so as much as I loved the texture of the Oatmeal Raisin cookies, the flavour wasn't for me. Also, another one of my guinea pigs, N, isn't a fan of raisins so something had to be done.

I made this recipe again with a few tweaks:

Took out the 7g of cinnamon completely.
Doubled the vanilla paste from 7.7g to 15g.
Replaced the raisins with dried blueberries. Kept the 30 minute hot water soak. Did not pat dry the blueberries to keep consistency of not patting dry the raisins.

All of these cookies were baked using the convection setting. When baking the Oatmeal Raisin Cookies, I didn't try baking them straight form the fridge so I decided to see if that would help with the over-spread of this cookie. I kept the size of the cookies the same as the ones in the Oatmeal Raisin and TLCs - 145g for large cookies and 45g for small cookies.

Our conclusions:

Some argued the cinnamon should've been reduced instead of eliminated. I disagree with this because I feel the dark colour the cookie takes on during baking adds enough depth of flavour. Well, that and the fact that I just don't like cinnamon 😬.
The great texture of the original Oatmeal Raisin recipe remained in this cookie - crispy outside and chewy middle.
It seemed like there was going to be a big difference in the large cookies when comparing the room temperature and cold cookies but there was a negligible difference in the final cookie.
The small cookies didn't show a difference when baking from room temperature or from the fridge.

Photos of Oatmeal Blueberry Cookies baking:

Photos of Oatmeal Blueberry Cookies post-bake:

Top left: 145g, room temperature, convection bake. Top right: 145g, from fridge, convection bake. Middle and bottom left: 45g, room temperature, convection bake. Middle and bottom right: 45g, from fridge, convection bake.