I know that Archway iced oatmeal cookies have a cult following, but I've never eaten one. Supermarket cookies were rare in my house growing up, and they were pretty much limited to Pepperidge Farm varieties in a white paper bag and Danish butter cookies in the blue tin. Of course, my lack of familiarity didn't dissuade me from trying Shauna Sever's homemade version, the "Crispy Iced Oatmeal Flats" in Midwest Made.
These are slice and bake cookies but you make the dough in the food processor. You're supposed to start by grinding oats into flour, but I happened to have oat flour on hand so I just used that instead. I blended the oat flour with dark brown sugar, flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, freshly grated nutmeg, cold cubed butter, and an egg yolk. I formed the dough into a log and chilled it for a day.
When I was ready to bake, I cut the log into slices that baked into lovely, uniform, round cookies that didn't look at all like they were sliced from a log. I was a little worried when I rotated the cookies halfway through baking because the tops looked totally smooth. But by the time I took the cookies out of the oven, they had developed small cracks on top -- and I knew that physical feature was important to achieving the proper finished look with the icing.
After the cookies were completely cooled, I dipped the tops in royal icing made from egg white, powdered sugar, vanilla, and salt. I loved the look of the iced cookies, with blotches of icing that somehow looked artistic. The icing dried firm. Because I've never had the Archway version of this cookie, I wasn't entirely sure what to expect, but I was surprised when I took my first bite. The cookie wasn't crispy. I was expecting it to be crunchy throughout, but it was slightly soft. Because I had used oat flour and there was no trace of oat texture, this cookie read to me much more like a spice cookie than an oatmeal cookie. However, it was delicious. I didn't get what I was expecting, but I can't really complain about the beautiful and tasty non-crispy spice cookies that I got!
Recipe: "Crispy Iced Oatmeal Flats" from Midwest Made by Shauna Sever.
These are slice and bake cookies but you make the dough in the food processor. You're supposed to start by grinding oats into flour, but I happened to have oat flour on hand so I just used that instead. I blended the oat flour with dark brown sugar, flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, freshly grated nutmeg, cold cubed butter, and an egg yolk. I formed the dough into a log and chilled it for a day.
After the cookies were completely cooled, I dipped the tops in royal icing made from egg white, powdered sugar, vanilla, and salt. I loved the look of the iced cookies, with blotches of icing that somehow looked artistic. The icing dried firm. Because I've never had the Archway version of this cookie, I wasn't entirely sure what to expect, but I was surprised when I took my first bite. The cookie wasn't crispy. I was expecting it to be crunchy throughout, but it was slightly soft. Because I had used oat flour and there was no trace of oat texture, this cookie read to me much more like a spice cookie than an oatmeal cookie. However, it was delicious. I didn't get what I was expecting, but I can't really complain about the beautiful and tasty non-crispy spice cookies that I got!
Recipe: "Crispy Iced Oatmeal Flats" from Midwest Made by Shauna Sever.
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