Bouchon Bakery: Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

My second foray into Bouchon Bakery cookbook occurred today when I baked the oatmeal raisin cookies on page 32.

I am dedicated to weighing everything, but I didn't weigh the vanilla paste. I used my measuring spoon instead! Ingredients all gathered below. I've never weighed eggs before. I broke two eggs and then whisked them to break them up so I could pour off the excess.

I was supposed to sift the cinnamon and the soda into the flour, but I did the cinnamon and the salt. The Kosher salt had no inclination to go through the sieve!

Maybe because my brown sugar is not new, the lumps didn't break up with the whisk as described. I got a pestle and broke them up with it instead. Then I whisked it all together.

Creamed butter - supposed to look like mayonnaise.

I forgot to take photos for the adding of the dry ingredients, the flour/cinnamon/soda/salt mix. Then when it was time to add the oatmeal, the directions said to pulse 10 times. That kind of instruction goes with a food processor and this was being made in a stand mixer. I turned it quickly on and off ten times, but it didn't make sense to me. I used my rubber spatula to fold the oats in and then to fold in the raisins.

I made the small version of the cookies so that the recipe made a dozen cookies. It is designed to make six huge cookies, which I guess would be the size of salad plates. I had no desire - these are more than big enough for me. I baked in a convection oven and my cookies look darker than the photo in the Bouchon Bakery cookbook. But these taste DELICIOUS. 

My son-in-law and daughter each ate one and had a fit over how good these are.

 Confession: the photo below is of the recipe with golden raisins in it, but my grandchildren don't like raisins, so I baked six with golden raisins and six with chocolate chips. In the photo above, the left six are made with raisins and the right six are made with chocolate chips.

Bouchon Bakery First Bake: Pecan Sandies

I didn't want just to bake out of Dorie Greenspan and I've had Thomas Keller: Bouchard Bakery which includes many recipes by Sebastian Rouxel who heads up the Bakery. I
decided to bake out of it as well. The beginning recipes are cookie recipes and the first recipe is for pecan sandies, baked by Thomas Keller's mom on a regular basis. The recipe is on page 10.

I had a great time with them and am on board with baking my way through this cookbook as well.

As a woman who owns four sets of measuring cups, I am delighted to acknowledge that I am now only using my scale. I use the cups to dip out whatever I am measuring, but I go by the scale altogether these days.

So first I weighed all the ingredients and had them prepped and ready:

I even weighed the individual cookies. They were supposed to weigh 3 ounces each. I had a few that were slightly light so I ended up with 19 cookies instead of the 18 that the recipe promised and the last one was on the light side!

The instructions said to flatten each mound to about two inches. I have another cookie recipe that says to grease and sugar the bottom of a glass to accomplish this so since the recipe didn't say how to flatten them, I employed this method. I used the paper from the unsalted butter to grease the bottom of the glass and then dipped it into powdered sugar. They looked like the photo below going into the oven.

The photo above is how they looked coming out after 18 minutes in a convection oven. I cooled them for five minutes in the pan and then moved them to a cooling rack and covered them with powdered sugar.

They are so delicious that I took a bite before I took the photo!

     
I gave most of them to my friend Julia who has boys at her house when I ate lunch with her today. I hope they enjoy them....so much better than the ones in the bag at the grocery!