photo credit: georgie_grdEach year in the spring my husband takes several canoeing trips. The destinations are usually within six to eight hours from our house so he takes extra days along with a weekend to relax. He has many different buddies that he goes on these trips with. There are some family trips that include his brothers and nephews and then there are trips that include long time kayaking pals.
Regardless of where he is going and who he is with, he always wants me to make a batch of chocolate chip cookies for him to take along. This started the first year we were married because I made a batch of the cookies for him to take along on the water. He likes them so much that I can hardly keep up making them during the spring months.
The chocolate chip cookies that I make are a cross between several recipes that I have seen in cookbooks or have eaten. There are some recipes for cookies that have many ingredients for energy including oatmeal, peanut butter and honey, and then there are the standard chocolate chip cookies recipes. I have combined the two and added a few touches of my own to create a cookie that is very tasty as well as packed with energy producing ingredients.
I started experimenting with the recipes because one of my husband’s friends did not like oatmeal. I wanted to leave the oatmeal in for the nutritional value. I had read that one of the famous chocolate chip cookies that are sold in the shopping malls uses a ground oatmeal. I decided that I would try using the blender. This works very well. I simply put a cup of oat meal at a time into the blender and push the grind button. The result is oatmeal flour that I add in with the wheat flour. The texture of the chocolate chip cookies no longer has that oatmeal feel.
I also do not stop with the basic chocolate chips. I also add toffee chips, peanut butter chips, butterscotch chips, anything that I have on hand. The oat flour keeps the cookies moist. I also finely chop walnuts and pecans and add them to the chocolate chip cookies. I drop the dough in big balls that I make with the ice cream scoop.
This year I spent one afternoon making a huge batch of the chocolate chip cookie dough. I multiplied all the ingredient amounts by ten. I had a huge stainless steel bowl as well as my largest mixing bowl full of dough. I rolled the dough in long strips like the ready to bake cookies in the grocery store. Now I can bake them as he needs them without having to make the dough each time