Peas on the Plate

I do not labor under the delusion that my uncle was a groundbreaking recipe developer. I assume, and periodically discover, that a lot of these recipes were pulled from somewhere else. The Cookie Bible serves as a collage of recipes from friends, family, and box labels. That’s something I love about it: in a weird way, it’s a testament to how well-liked John was.

I decided this oatmeal cookie recipe, which features toasted almonds and an almond glaze, was a good pick. However, I balked at the first ingredient: 3/4 C of butter-flavored vegetable shortening.

I did some quick cost-benefit analysis. On one hand: following a recipe exactly. On the other hand: buying butter-flavored shortening for one recipe, something that I’ll probably never use for anything else except this recipe exclusively. I began to do some research on what my options were and wound up finding the origins of this recipe on (I’m not kidding) the Crisco website.

Since my uncle wasn’t the most Internetty of the bunch, I doubt that’s how he found this, and since his baking of this goes back pretty far, I’m willing to bet it was on a Crisco container at some point, caught his interest, and he went for it.

The resulting cookie is the opposite of the cruel disappointment you felt as a kid when you reached for a chocolate chip cookie and discovered that it was oatmeal raisin. It’s delicious and nutty, and once you add the glaze, there’s a crunch there that adds to the whole experience.

These were a hit at the Christmas party I brought them to, which is saying a lot because I had some stiff competition from lots of other talented guests who love to bake, too.

Even though they’re pretty simple to make, there are a few considerations that require some time that I’ll go into detail here:

What’s the Difference Between Shortening and Butter?

After doing some more reading on the aforementioned horror of using “butter flavored shortening,” I learned that using shortening has more to do with structure than flavor. It doesn’t spread as much when heated as butter does, so these don’t turn into a sprawling, oaty mess.

However, I had regular Crisco on hand and couldn’t justify the idea of putting a tub of different shortening into my cabinet for the next year, so I split the difference and used some shortening and some butter. The cookies kept their shape, the flavor was immaculate, and everything went swimmingly.

How to Toast Almonds

The recipe calls for toasted almonds. The original one just says “almonds, toasted” and we all know how I feel about not including all the steps into the prep time, so I added instructions on how to toast almonds in the recipe below.

• Heat your oven to 350 degrees.
• Spread the sliced almonds out in one even layer. This will probably require more than one cookie sheet.
• Bake them for 7-9 minutes, 10 if you want them to be a little more golden brown and nutty.

The aroma in your house from these alone will be unparalleled, but then baking them again into a cookie will really take things to the next level.

Do I really need to bake them one batch at a time?

Unfortunately, yes. As I have a pretty small oven, this made the cookies take a ridiculous amount of time. I tried to bake two sheets on two different racks just to see what happened, and the result was not ideal: the texture was spongy, they didn’t brown as well, and they didn’t cook as evenly.

My disappointment was palpable, since I was baking these eight cookies at a time, placing the cookies 2″ apart as instructed. If you’re truly pressed for time, you can probably put them 1″ apart instead since they don’t spread too much.

If you have a normal sized oven, baking these a dozen at a time will be no problem, cutting down on baking time drastically. And if you have enough oven space to put two cookie sheets next to each other, how does it feel to be God’s favorite?

How to make the almond glaze

This glaze is super easy to put together – just some powdered sugar, milk, and almond extract is all it takes. Mix them together until you get thicker, slow-moving ribbons when you lift up the spoon:

Weirdly, the glaze only covers half the cookies, but both glazed and unglazed are delicious. I suggest leaving half of them plain for people who don’t have an absolutely insatiable sweet tooth to enjoy!

How to frost the cookies

The original recipe’s instructions for this were vague – “spread the icing on the cookie.” Okay, cool, but spreading a glaze on a spherical cookie is a confusing instruction, so I streamlined it just a bit. You can absolutely dip the top of the cookie in the glaze, let excess run off, and then dip it in the almonds.

Or, if you want to be more judicious with your glaze application, you can try what I did: coat a spoon in the glaze and wipe the cookie against the spoon. There’s then less glaze used, but still enough to add some more flavor and then hold some nice crunchy almonds on there.

Either way, the outcome is a nice lil’ Christmas porcupine that’s delicious and cute.

Most of these cookies are a labor of love, but they wouldn’t be here if they weren’t worth it. Bake these for the almond lover in your life, and share them with everyone else.

Oatmeal Cookies with Toasted Almonds

Yield: 4.5 dozen

Prep Time: 1 hour

Cook Time: 40 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour 40 minutes

A mix of textures and packed with nutty flavor. Give your new favorite oatmeal cookie a try!

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Ingredients

• 1/2 C vegetable shortening
• 1/4 C butter, softened
• 1 1/4 C packed light brown sugar.
• 1 egg, room temperature
• 1/3 C milk, room temperature
• 1 tsp almond extract
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 3 C quick cooking oats (I used McCann’s)
• 1 C all purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp Kosher salt
• Heaping 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
• 3 C raw sliced almonds, separated

Almond Glaze

• 1 C powdered sugar
• 1 tbsp + 1 tsp milk
• 1/2 tsp almond extract

Instructions

Toast the almonds:

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
2. Spread the almonds into one even layer across as many cookie sheets as necessary.
3. Bake for 7-9 minutes, 10 if you want them to be a little more golden brown and pronounced in flavor.
4. Coarsely chop 2 C of almonds. Leave the remaining third cup and set it aside in a bowl.

Make the cookie dough:

1. Increase the heat of the oven to 375 degrees.
2. Grease cookie sheets.
3. In a large bowl, combine oats, flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon.
4. In a separate large bowl, use a mixer to beat together shortening, butter, brown sugar, egg, milk, and extracts (vanilla and almond) together at medium speed until well blended.
5. With the mixer at low speed, gradually add the flour mixture to the shortening mixture and beat until blended.
6. Stir in the coarsely-chopped almonds.
7. Using a scoop or your hands, form the dough into 1 ¼ inch balls and place 1½  – 2 inches apart on the prepared cookie sheets (see note). 
8. Bake, one cookie sheet at a time, for 10-12 minutes or until lightly browned (see note).
9. Cool for 2 minutes on the cookie sheets and then remove to cooling racks.

Decorate:

1. Once completely cooled, use a spoon to mix together the powdered sugar, milk, and almond extract in a medium sized bowl.
2. Spread the glaze on tops of cookies and then dip the cookies into sliced almonds, pushing down slightly to get a few more almonds on there (see note).
3. Set the cookies on another cooling rack with something underneath it to catch any stray glaze, almonds, etc. The glaze will take probably about 20-30 minutes to set.

Notes

• I got fed up with measuring 1 ¼ inches for each dough ball and wound up doing this by weight. Each dough ball wound up weighing 21g.
• Each batch needs about 10 minutes of bake time, and they need to be baked one batch at a time. If you can fit 1 dozen on one sheet, it’ll take you 40 minutes total.
• The glaze recipe makes enough for half the cookies. Serve them glazed and unglazed – both are delicious and deserve their own space!