Adventures in Baking – Chip ‘n’ Nut Drops

You all know that I love my trusty drop cookies. While they may not be gorgeous, they are delicious, and taste is what matters most to me. So, my fellow bakers, this month I bring to you King Arthur Flour’s Chip ‘n’ Nut Drops!

I love this recipe for multiple reasons. First, it’s easy. I whipped the butter, added the sugar, eggs, and vanilla, and then mixed all of the dry ingredients together. (While the recipe says the oats must be ground in a food processor, the lazy part of me decided to skip this step and luckily I suffered no consequences.) Then I just poured the dry mixture into my stand mixer a little bit at a time (or else the flour gets everywhere), and voila! My dough was made.

I also like this recipe because it’s customizable. Ground rolled oats or whole rolled oats, chocolate chips or white chocolate chips, walnuts or pecans, peanut butter chips or toffee – the choices for add-ins and flavor combinations are seemingly endless. Plus, this recipe holds a whopping 4 ⅓ cups of additions according to King Arthur Flour. Personally, I added a round 4 cups of chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, and toffee bits, skipping the extra ⅓ cup to save my mixer from overflow. The end results were delicious; imagine if one substituted the peanut butter chips for, say, almonds or real peanuts, or the white chocolate for raisins or cranberries!

Another reason this is a great recipe: the baking time is only 7-10 minutes. Compared with other recipes that require 15, even 20 minutes in the oven, this cookie bakes fast, so one isn’t tied up cooking for hours. A possible problem to note, however, is that these cookies also spread quite a lot, and while their thin nature makes them bake faster, they can break easily when transferring from the pan to the cooling rack. Moreover, the baking time is slightly inaccurate if your oven runs colder than King Arthur Flour’s; I had to extend my baking time to 9-10 minutes. Finally, the real problem with these cookies, though minor, is being able to tell whether or not they’re done. Towards the end, I just flipped them over and stared at their bottoms, poking doughy-looking parts to see if they were underbaked or if I was just paranoid.

These pitfalls, though minor, are outweighed by the fact that this cookie is delicious and this recipe makes a truly humongous batch. King Arthur’s Cookie Companion says the recipe makes 4 ½ dozen; if you like smaller cookies, like me, it makes close to 6 dozen. In summary, Chip ‘n’ Nut Drops are an easy, fast, and tasty bake, and I highly recommend them.

Chip ‘n’ Nut Drops recipe:

Yield: 4 ½ dozen cookies

Baking Temperature: 375 ℉

Baking Time: 7 minutes

Ingredients:

• 1 cup (2 sticks, 8 ounces) unsalted butter
• 1 cup (7 ounces) granulated sugar
• 1 cup (8 ounces) light brown sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 ½ cups (8 ¾ ounces) rolled oats
• 2 cups (8 ½ ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• ¾ teaspoon salt
• 1 cup (6 ounces) peanut butter chips
• 1 cup (6 ounces) chocolate chips
• 4 ounces white chocolate, grated, or substitute ⅔ cup (4 ounces) white chocolate chips, crushed or coarsely ground
• 1 ½ cups (6 ounces) chopped walnuts

1. Preheat the oven to 375℉. Lightly grease (or line with parchment) two baking sheets.
2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and the sugars. Beat in the eggs and vanilla.
3. Using a blender or food processor, process the oats until they’re finely ground. Transfer the oats to a medium-sized bowl and stir in the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the creamed mixture, stirring until blended. Stir in the chips, white chocolate, and walnuts.
4. Drop the dough by the tablespoonful, 2 inches apart, onto the prepared baking sheets. Bake the cookies for 7 minutes, or until they appear set and are just beginning to brown. Remove them from the oven and transfer to a rack to cool.

Citation: “Chip ‘n’ Nut Drops. The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion: The Essential Cookie Cookbook. Woodstock: The Countryman Press, 2004, 2013. Print.