Cookies are everywhere right now. People are gathering for festive neighborhood cookie exchanges and boxes of carefully-curated homemade cookies are being left on doorsteps around the world.
There are a lot of cookie cookbooks available at bookstores now, too–The Great Minnesota Cookie Book, King Arthur Baking’s revised The Essential Cookie Companion, Dorie’s Cookies come to mind. Cookbooks make great gifts. Just sayin…
This recipe is from Sarah Kieffer’s wonderful cookbook 100 Cookies. It is a rich combination of traditional oatmeal cookie ingredients and some unexpected ones–white chocolate, apricots, and fresh rosemary. You read that right. Fresh rosemary!
You can, of course, find some great cookie recipes on Blue Cayenne, too. Just type “cookies ” into the search button and you will find the likes of Peanut Butter Miso cookies, Rum-Raisin cookies, Sesame cookies, Shortbread cookies and a lot more.
With cookies on our minds, here’s a little history lesson. The concept of cookies is believed to have originated from the practice of baking a bit of cake batter in an oven to test the oven’s temperature. That’s right, cookies long ago were an ingenious substitute for the yet-to-be invented oven thermometer. Another element in the story of the cookie’s origins, was, of course, the widespread cultivation of sugar. Food historians believe that sugar was first cultivated somewhere in Southeast Asia with some leaning toward the lowlands of Bengal as the cultivated crop’s site of origin. Traders and invaders then (thankfully!!!) carried sugar west.
Here’s a great recipe. Be happy.
Rosemary Apricot Oatmeal Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 C. all-purpose flour
- 3/4 t. baking soda
- 1/2 t. salt
- 12 T. unsalted butter (room temperature)
- 3/4 C. brown sugar
- 1/3 C. granulated sugar
- 1 t. fresh rosemary (finely minced)
- 1 large egg
- 2 t. vanilla extract
- 2 1/4 C. rolled oats
- 1/2 C. dried apricots (chopped small)
- 2 oz. white chocolate (finely chopped)
Directions
- Step 1 Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. and prepare a sheet pan by lining it with parchment or lining it with a Silpat liner.
- Step 2 Whisk flour, baking soda and salt together in a bowl. Set aside.
- Step 3 Cream butter in the bowl of your stand mixer. This will take about a minute. Add the sugars and rosemary to the butter and beat at medium speed for about three minutes until the butter mixture is aerated and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla to the butter mixture and beat until all the ingredients are combined.
- Step 4 Add the flour mixture and mix until combined. Use a low setting so that you don’t have flour all over the kitchen. Scrape the sides of the bowl.
- Step 5 Add the oats to the mixture and mix on low speed until combined.
- Step 6 Add the chopped apricots and chopped white chocolate and mix on low speed until combined.
- Step 7 Stir the mixture to be sure all the ingredients are incorporated into the cookie batter.
- Step 8 Roll the dough into small balls (I used a 1 inch cookie scoop) and arrange them on your cookie sheet so that they are about one inch apart. (You will have enough cookie batter for a lot of cookies, so you will be baking them in batches.)
- Step 9 Bake cookies in a preheated 350 degree F. oven for about 10 minutes (turn the pan midway though the baking). Baking time may vary in your oven, so watch the cookies carefully.
- Step 10 When your cookies are done they will be slightly brown on the edges and light brown on the bottom.
- Step 11 Remove the pan from the oven and let the cookies cool.
