Cowboy Cookies

Have you ever made a challenge/goal for yourself only to have a slight panic attack when you looked at your schedule only to to see you would hardly be home to make that goal a reality?

That just happened to me.

Yes, I probably take things too seriously, but whatever. 

A goal is a goal!

Step one - Pull out all of the cookbooks to decide which one would be the lucky winner as the first "branch out" recipe. There was much excitement, let me tell you.
(We all know the real step one is choosing which music you will listen to during the baking. For the Cowboy Cookies, I went with a classic Kanye West album).

Step two - Read through all of the recipes and narrow it down purely based on the ingredients that are or are not currently in the kitchen.

Step three - Make sure your music is at an appropriate level and begin!

The Cowboy Cookies were the winner for the first post, mostly because I had all of the ingredients.

Side note: I greatly admire all people who are able to keep a fully stocked pantry.

Back to the cookies.

The recipe came from Baked Explorations, which I love. It's so fun to look through!
Fun fact - I first glanced through this cookbook while I was waiting to surprise the manager at the Borders in Largo, MD. That sounds a lot more scandalous than it was.

So, you know how cookie recipes go. Mix the butter, sugar, brown sugar together. Add the egg(s). Then the other random dry ingredients, and what not. End with flour, oatmeal, chocolate.
The recipe called for two cups of semi-sweet chocolate chunks, but alas. I keep a poorly stocked pantry, so I was devoid of semi-sweet chocolate chunks.
So, I went to plan B - chopping up semi-sweet baking squares.
However, I ended up with only a cup of those, so then I went to plan C, which was adding a cup of milk chocolate chips to the mix. I figure it's chocolate, so how horrible can it be?

Once everything has been mixed together, cover the mixing bowl in a soft blanket (or foil) so the dough can take a cold, four hour nap. It's the luckiest dough ever.

Once the dough's refrigerated naptime is over, proceed to scoop the dough onto a cookie sheet. The dough blobs end up being about 1 inch in diameter. Try not to eat as much of the dough as I did. Blast!

Side note - I hate treating people like they don't know anything about baking. Probably because I absolutely hate it when other bloggers do it to me. Like, "Then you're going to want to put the chocolate chips IN the cookies." Oh, really? I thought we'd just be setting them on the counter to look at while we ate the cookies.
So, please don't be offended if I make a comment about how big the cookies are supposed to be. I am guessing all of you are familiar with the average size of a cookie.

So - fill the cookie sheet with cookie dough blobs, stick the cookie blobs into an oven, wait for a few minutes, then pull out the cookies, let them cool, and then partake in the deliciousness.
If you're like me, you bake them at 7:00 in the morning and take them to work with you so you won't be tempted to eat all of them.
Also, if you are like me again you will forget to take a picture of them as proper bloggers do, so you'll be forced to take one at your office while they are still around.
And you'll love sharks.
We're still playing the "if you're like Emily" game, right?

I digress.

Verdict:
These cookies were a super easy first recipe. I mean, they're cookies, so I kind of feel like I cheated the new goal.
I'll make it up to you next week, Goal! I promise!
Moving on, these were tasty little morsels. My co-worker said "It's like meeting a Care Bear! And he's real!" I'm not entirely sure what this means, but she said it with a smile on her face, so I'll take it as a good thing.

Obligatory photos!

Recipe:

1 3/4 flour

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

2 cups rolled oats

14 Tbs. unsalted butter

3/4 sugar

1 cup brown sugar

1 egg

1 egg yolk

1 tsp. vanilla

1 tsp. instant espresso powder

2 cups semisweet chocolate chunks

3/4 thin, salty pretzels (optional) to sprinkle on top of the dough blobs prior to baking.