I flipped through the book to the cookies. I found a recipe for oatmeal cookies. I could eat oatmeal cookies tonight. But then I read the recipe and it kind of made no sense.
2 tablespoons butter
1 cup oatmeal
1 egg and one yolk
2/3 cup sugar
1 tablespoon flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
Only 1 tablespoon of flour? Hmmm. It looks like it will be too wet. I read on.
"Melt butter and pour over oatmeal and let stand until cool. Cream eggs and sugar to fluffy consistency. Combine the two mixtures and then add flour and baking powder sifted together.Grease and flour baking tins carefully, for these cookies are apt to stick. Drop by spoon and not too closely, for the cookies spread quite a bit. These cookies are fragile and delicious and can be enhanced further by placing them on a bottle or other round object, as you remove them from tin, to acquire a slight bend. 35 cookies."
If I didn't know any better, these cookies sound like the amazing oatmeal crisps sold at IKEA and other Swedish stores. I'll try it. You'll notice however, that there is no mention of baking temperature and time. Okaaay. Well, I will assume no temp means 350, right? And I'll start at 5 minutes and go from there. Now to make the dough (a term I use lightly, this was more like a batter)
I melted the butter and mixed in the oats. Since my house is so cool, even in this uncommonly warm October, the oats were cool in ten minutes.
I then whipped the sugar and eggs for a couple of minutes until fluffy? I didn't really understand. After two minutes the consistency didn't change much so I decided it was fluffy enough.
I mixed the oats and eggs together, and realized that this the wettest cookie dough ever. Maybe that ONE tablespoon of flour would help. Obviously not. So now I was scared. This is not going to make edible cookies, is it?
I spooned a tablespoon of "batter" onto parchement lined, greased baking "tins."
They baked for about 8 minutes and came out golden brown on the edges. They looked edible.
For the rest of the batter, I spooned teaspoon amounts so they might brown more evenly. I tried one. So did Ron. We decided that they taste almost exactly like the IKEA cookies. The texture was a little off. I may play with the recipe a little, add a little more flour, subtract the extra egg yolk. I'm sure I'll figure it out, but even if I don't, they are really tasty. Especially when I decided to melt some chocolate and make sandwiches with them. Mmmmm. I love Swedish cookies! I bet these were the St. Olafian cookies Rose was making that late night in the kitchen. Or maybe it was another Swedish cookie that I might find in that vintage cook book...
Update!
I just made these cookies again. And they came out better than last night! Here's what I did differently. Instead of one egg and one yolk, I only used one egg. Instead of one cup of oats, I took 1/2 of the oats and whirred them in the blender for about 5 seconds to break some of the oats up. Then I added a tablespoon of oat bran. In with the flour and baking powder, I added 1/4 teaspoon of salt. Oh, and I used salted butter too. It seemed like when only creaming one egg with the sugar, that the mixture did get a little fluffy as stated in the recipe. I dropped teaspoons of batter on the cookie sheets, and the mixture did not spread right away, which was nice and meant I could fit twelve on a cookie sheet. These are definitely the Ikea cookies and will definitely be on the holiday treat list! PS: I had a thought, since there's only one tablespoon of flour in the recipe, I bet a gluten-free flour (rice, peanut, etc.) could easily be substituted without much notice.
Much drier dough
They look like real unbaked cookies!
Yummy!
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