Recipe Corner: Not-Quite Sugar Cookies

When we make cookies, we'll often start with a basic recipe and then play around.  We'll add stuff, substitute stuff, etc., and then see what the results taste like.  If we are lucky, we'll write down the successful variations so we can make it again.

This started out as plain old sugar cookies.  That's one of our go-to recipes.  It is so easy to make -- we can have a batch mixed together and on the cookie sheets by the time the oven preheats.  It is a great base for all kinds of additions.

The latest batch is worth writing down.  Its origin as a sugar cookie is not obvious.  I don't know how well they will keep.  I don't think we'll be finding out, since they are disappearing rapidly.

To be honest, a lot of the amounts in the recipe below are approximate.  How much, after all, is a "sploot"?  Or "add a bit more until it tastes right" or "add until the dough is the right texture or thickness"?

Not Quite Sugar Cookies (aka Yet Another Sugar Cookie Variation)

1 stick butter (1/2 cup)
1/2 cup sugar (white)
about 1-2 tablespoons molasses
1 egg
1-1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup oatmeal (old fashioned oats)
1 to 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
about 1 teaspoon almond extract (probably optional)
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp cloves
1/4 tsp ginger
"some" milk

Preheat oven to 375F
Melt the butter in the microwave (or at least get it pretty soft).
Add the sugar and mix.  Add the egg and mix.  Add the vanilla and almond extracts, then the baking soda, salt, and spices.  Mix.  Add the flour and oatmeal.  Mix.  Add enough milk to make it like a good sugar cookie dough.  I don't know how much that is, but I think it's somewhere between a few tablespoons and a quarter cup.  Maybe we'll be more careful and write down the exact amount next time.  If so, I'll update the recipe in this post.

Put small balls of cookie dough on the cookie sheets.  Bake about 10 minutes.  Remove when the cookies are done (starting to get golden on top, bottoms starting to brown, and obviously set and no longer wet-looking in the middle).

These are different in texture from regular sugar cookies.  Is it the oatmeal?  The milk?  The molasses?  The higher relative proportion of flour/oats to the rest of the ingredients?  The crumb seems more tender than the slight graininess of a sugar cookie. They have a slightly caramel-like flavor.

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The basic proportions for sugar cookies are as follows, in case we need to know.  We use the same method for mixing.  Nuke butter, add sugar and egg, add other liquids and the powdery things, finally add flour, then add any other additions such as nuts or chocolate chips.

Basic Sugar Cookie proportions:

1 stick butter, 1/2 cup sugar, 1 egg, 1/4 tsp baking soda, 1-2 tsp vanilla extract, pinch of salt, 1.5 cups flour

Those can be drop cookies as is.  Or, you can refrigerate them in a log shape to make refrigerator cookie dough.  Or, you can chill it for a while, then roll out and use cookie cutters on the rolled out dough.

The obvious variations are to use brown sugar for part of the sugar portion, to add cocoa to make them chocolate sugar cookies (or add cocoa to part of the dough and make spiral or marbled cookies), to add interesting spices, to use different flavor extracts, to add things like raisins or nuts or lemon zest or other tidbits, to make them into thumbprint cookies, to add icing (mix powdered sugar with a smidge of liquid and some food coloring), to substitute other flours for part of the regular flour, and so on.