A recipe for oatmeal date shortbread cookies, excerpted from the cookbook Smitten Kitchen Keepers: New Classics for Your Perpetually Recordsdata, by Deb Perelman

This combines two of my favourite varieties of cookies: basic tender, buttery, perfect-every-time shortbread cookies, and oatmeal raisin cookies. Truthfully, I used to be simply taking part in round, attempting to see what number of oats I might stuff right into a slice-and-bake shortbread and nonetheless hold the cookies delicate and considerably melting in your mouth. However they got here out so good, and disappeared so quick, I needed to make them once more, after which once more. They’re making an excellent case for turning into our new Home Cookie, the sort of reasonably candy, not-too-heavy deal with I’d even make on a weekday, if requested properly. They’re simple; you don’t should plan a complete lot or purchase any particular components. I used dates after I ran out of raisins, and located that I vastly desire them right here; they’re tender and much more harmonious with butter, brown sugar, and vanilla.

Oatmeal Date Shortbread

Makes 30 to 32 cookies

Elements

1½ cups (195 grams) all-purpose flour

6 tablespoons (80 grams) packed light-brown sugar

¼ cup (50 grams) granulated sugar

1 teaspoon (3 grams) kosher salt 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup (8 ounces or 225 grams) unsalted butter, chilly for meals processor or stand mixer, room temperature for hand mixer

1⅓ cups (130 grams) old style rolled oats

1 cup (140 grams) chopped, pitted dates

About ½ teaspoon (however, please, simply eyeball it) finely grated orange zest

Notes:

You can also make a variation like this: Oatmeal, Date, and White Chocolate shortbread: cut back the dates to ⅔ cup, and add 1 cup (6 ounces, or 170 grams) chopped white chocolate whenever you add the dates. that is our second-favorite approach to make the cookies—scrumptious, however sweeter and barely much less delicate.

For a prettier cookie, beat 1 egg till it’s blended and brush it over the cooled cookie log, then roll the log in coarse or turbinado sugar earlier than slicing.

Instructions

In a meals processor or stand mixer: Mix the flour, sugars, and salt. add the vanilla and chilly butter in chunks, and mix (in a meals processor) till the combination is sandy and no chunks stay; or beat (in a stand mixer) till the butter is totally blended into the flour. add the oats, dates, and orange zest, and blend till all the pieces is mixed and the dough seems a bit of clumpy.

With a hand mixer: beat room-temperature butter, sugars, and salt collectively in a medium-to-large bowl till gentle and clean. add vanilla, flour, oats, dates, and orange zest and beat till mixed; the combination will appear crumbly.

Divide the dough in half, and switch every to a 9-by-13-inch piece of parchment paper. Draw up the edges of the paper over one half of the dough, press the dough from the surface of the paper into a good log, after which roll the additional paper up round it. repeat with the second half of the dough, forming one other log. Chill the logs till they’re agency, about 1 hour within the fridge or 20 minutes within the freezer.

Warmth the oven to 350°f (175°C). Unwrap every cookie log, and use the parchment to line a big baking sheet.

Rigorously lower every log with a pointy serrated knife into ½-inch slices. if the slices break aside, simply squeeze them again collectively. organize them on the ready baking sheet(s). the cookies will barely unfold.

Bake them for 12 to 14 minutes, or till the perimeters are simply starting to get golden brown. Allow them to cool barely earlier than transferring the cookies you don’t eat instantly to wire racks to chill.

The dough log might be made forward and saved, wrapped in plastic, for 1 week within the fridge, or 1 month within the freezer. baked cookies hold in an hermetic container for five days, or so I’ve heard.

Excerpted from Smitten Kitchen Keepers: New Classics for Your Perpetually Recordsdata. Copyright © 2022 by Deb Perelman. Pictures copyright © 2022 by Deb Perelman. E-book Design by Cassandra J. Pappas. Jacket Pictures by Deb Perelman. Meals Styling by Barret Washburne. Printed by Urge for food by Random Home, a division of Penguin Random Home Canada Restricted. Reproduced by association with the Writer. All rights reserved.

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