Omnomicon

I’m back! Didja miss me? Vacation was vacation, I won’t bore you with details, but I did meet Steffany from Dinner Love, and she’s a dear.

But hey check it out, while I was glutting myself daily on hotel breakfast Danish, there were 45 Tastebuddies trying out 11 different recipes in a valiant effort to determine which would qualify as THE BEST CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES there are. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, welcome to Omnomicon! Here’s where you can read about our monthly Recipe Round-Robin contest.

And here, let me show you what the best looks like, beginning to end.

That up there is all the stuff that goes into these suckers. It’s hard to tell, but there are a couple secret ingredients in there.

The white stuff is ground oatmeal, and the brown crumbs are grated Hershey bars. Specifically Hershey bars. Except instead of grating, I thought I’d try getting the job done with my food processor.

And what do you know, it totally worked.

And then stir that into all the other stuff with some nuts and, naturally, chocolate chips.

The batter is extremely tempting, but be sure to save some for the cookies, they’re worth it.

So do you recognize these? They were Bubbe’s Fantastic Chocolate Chip Cookies, code named Recipe L, and many big thanks to Hallie for letting us give them a try! Here’s what she had to say about ’em:

Here is my bubbe’s fantastic recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookies. They’re definitely not low-fat, but they’re the best I’ve ever made (and I’m a pastry chef!).

So these are both pastry-chef and Tastebuddy approved. I knew you’s guys had great taste. My guess is that the groundedness of the oatmeal gives these more texture without being so suggestive of oatmeal cookies. I also have a theory on how the Hershey bar plays into things: usually a chocolate chip cookie is a sugar cookie with bitter chocolate chips here and there, but little to tie these two elements together. Maybe the grated chocolate creates a gentler transition from cookie to chip? Even if my theory is right (and I’m open to the alternative, I know what I don’t know), my word choice is not even remotely technical, so Hallie, please feel free to jump in with your expertise.

Here’s the word I got via email results:

• Our house votes for recipe L. It had lots of chocolate and grinding the oatmeal was a great idea because it made for flatter and less dry cookies. Recipe L was nice and chocolaty! After we made our decision we did our own taste test with friends and recipe L definitely won hands down.
• Far and away, I and my 3 co-tasters chose Bubbe’s Fantastic recipe as the best of the two. The finely ground oatmeal added a nice substance to the cookies without giving it the graininess of an oatmeal cookie. They baked up nicely–no flat cookies here–and the ground Hershey’s chocolate gave the cookies a beautiful brown color and a little extra chocolate kick. I used hazelnuts since it said you could add your choice of nuts–not a huge fan of nuts in cookies, but they tasted great in this recipe.
• The texture was very nice; the oatmeal provided more substance to the cookie and even though some of us had hesitations about whether oatmeal belonged in a traditional chocolate chip cookie, it was quite good.
• So good. If you’re including technique suggestions, rolling these guys into balls really helped.
• Who knew oatmeal could help so much?

And here’s the word on the web (leave a comment with a link if I missed your post!):

• Domestic Ambitions has a writeup
• Steph of Obsessed With Baking goes into great detail as well!
• Natalie at Oven Love reviewed her favourite of the two she tested.

And here’s what they looked like in other people’s kitchens:

Ruth made Bubbe’s

And Jeff also made Bubbe’s

Then Domestic Ambitions made the Friendly Choco-Chippers . . .

. . . and also Sheila’s (nice collage-work, btw).

Next up are the Kitten-Free (calls for exactly 0 kittens in the ingredient list, and the cleverness was simply adorable) as compared to the Family Secret recipe, the latter which did not seem to work out for Carly, who may have been too busy with Sunday’s NYTimes crossword to care.

And lastly, there was the recipe that ended in “Mmm. Eat.” and Ruby’s Plan ahead cookies. I want to give Lisa mad props for this photo, it’s gorgeous.

And there you have it! Yet another Recipe Round-Robin, now with 200% more reader participation. Hooray! So I’m announcing a savoury recipe for July . . . any suggestions? I’m thinking summer-time BBQ dishes—pasta salad, seasoned hamburgers, probably not potato salad because there’s a huge tendency toward grossness and grossed-out taste-testers—but I bet comfort food will work regardless of the time of year. We’ll save fruitcake for December.

Thanks again to everyone for participating. Really, I mean it! I’m so psyched that this works out every month because people are saying they had fun and because I like reading about it, and giving stuff away is fun too.

And last but not least, here’s Hallie’s winning recipe.

Bubbe’s Fantastic Recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookies
yields about 3 dozen cookies

1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
2 cups flour
2 cups oatmeal, ground to mealy texture
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
12 oz chocolate chips [2 cups]
4 oz grated hershey bar [this amounts to 18.5 rectangles from the Big Bar, but use your algebra to figure it out if you can manage . . . I food processored those suckers, and it seemed to do the trick. If grating by hand, however, one Tastebuddy recommends freezing the bar first so it doesn’t melt in your hand.]
~1 cup chopped nuts of choice (I usually use pecans or walnuts) [editor used pecans, and they were fabulous]

Cream the butter and sugars together.
Add the eggs and vanilla and beat until fluffy.
Mix the dry ingredients and add to egg mixture.
Stir in the chips, nuts, and hershey bar.
Drop by rounded tablespoons onto a lined cookie sheet and bake at 375 for 6-8 minutes. [editor’s note: mine took about 10 minutes, and one Tastebuddy had reported 11-12 minutes. Final recommendation is check in at 6 minutes, and then every two minutes after that until you can see a little bit of browning happening on top].

nom nom nom!

nutrition summary (1 of 36 cookies yield): 220 calories, 12g fat, 1.5g fiber; ~5 weight watchers points

Revealing my disinterest in ice cream always draws a lot of incredulity on the behalf of the listener. Sometimes the reaction is decidedly offended, as though ice cream were treasured family moment I just figuratively dismissed with a bored wave of my hand. Other times it’s complete confusion. What did you just say? What do you mean, you “don’t like ice cream?” You must like some kind of ice cream. And it’s not like I hate the stuff, it’s just that I don’t care much for it, and if I’m going to down a thousand calories in the span of 10 minutes, I’d rather it be noodles I drag from takeout carton to pursed lips with some bamboo sticks.

But every now and again, I have this crazy craving for a banana split. And you know, I’m a simple girl in that respect: banana, vanilla ice cream, walnuts, chocolate bits, butterscotch and of course, a maraschino cherry. With this in mind I present a take on blondies that is a little lighter than usual and reminiscent of a banana split.

I’d like to use this opportunity to let you know, in case you didn’t, that a kitchen scale is a wise investment because then you don’t have to pack brown sugar, which is one of those things that just seems to completely interrupt the flow of my baking process. Similarly, you don’t have to sift your flour in order to measure it only to sift it again into the mixing bowl. And your scale has other uses that will no doubt come up in future recipes as I loudly bang the “really, just get a kitchen scale already” drum.

I thought that these bananas looked rather . . . conversational.

By now we all know to use very ripe bananas in our baking, and by necessity I often end up freezing them too, in an attempt to salvage that lone straggler at the end of the week. This is a convenient circumstance, as freezing then thawing the fruit bursts cells and brings out as much flavour as is possible from it. At least, that’s my understanding, but the actual fact that pre-frozen fruit is better for baking, for whatever reason this is the case, is confirmed by on Mr. Alton Brown who was rambling on in his weird way about it one Sunday afternoon a couple years ago as I nursed a hangover on the couch.

Wheat germ is one of those things I haven’t experimented with very much, but it has an unobtrusive nuttiness that avoids being too earthy. Of course, I’ve only had opportunity to pair it with quite a bit of sugar, so maybe this is different in other contexts. Also, walnuts and chocolate chips.

I polka dotted the top with some maraschino cherries. Because they really do scream ice cream, and it was the cutest thing I could think for a garnish.

Before:

After (all gummy from baking, yum!):

I find that full-on brownie size (more than 3″ on a side!) is just way too big, and really, after the first half I’m eating it because I don’t really want to hold onto the rest. With this in mind, I cut to the chase and halved the usual size. Triangles seem to make the split look more deliberate and less “shit, too many people showed up.”

These had just the perfect brownie-imitative texture. They weren’t too cakey, but had a lovely rise to them, avoiding the heavy greasiness of some blondie recipes. Of course, sacrificing that greasiness also sacrifices that amazing chewy crustiness, but the edges on these things are still quite satisfying.

And while the intention was to have a bar that really embraced a banana split all on its own, I would be seriously remiss if I had not tried it with a simple vanilla ice cream.

Banana Split Blondies

1/2 c butter (1 stick), softened
2/3 c sugar
2/3 c light brown sugar (147g)
2 tsp vanilla
4 very ripe bananas (previously frozen is best), mashed
1 egg
1 c whole wheat flour (125g)
1 c white flour (125g)
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 c wheat germ (optional)
1/2 c chocolate chips
1/2 c chopped walnuts
24 maraschino cherries, drained

Preheat oven to 350^o.

Cream butter & sugars, add vanilla, bananas and egg. Sift wheat & white flours along with the baking powder into the mix, then combine. Stir in wheat germ, chocolate chips and walnuts.

Spread into well-greased 9×13 metal baking pan—a glass pan will bake differently, so be aware. Dot with staggered maraschino cherries, three to a row, eight to a column.

Bake 35 minutes, and allow to cool completely before cutting. To get the triangle thing going on, first cut into a 3×4 grid (12 pieces), then cut each rectangle diagonally so each piece has one cherry.

nutrition summary: (1 of 24 bars) 174 calories, 7g fat, 1g fiber; about 4 weight watchers points