Food & Drink

Waffled Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

The portability of the waffle iron is key here: You can churn out warm cookies from anywhere with a working outlet (a dorm room, a school lunchroom, or bake sale).

Your brain reads waffle, but your taste buds say cookie. And they’re both right.

Waffled Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Makes about 20 cookies

INGREDIENTS

½ cup unsalted butter, softened
½ cup firmly packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
½ cup all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
¾ cup old-fashioned rolled oats
¾ cup semisweet mini chocolate chips
Nonstick cooking spray

INSTRUCTIONS

Preheat the waffle iron on medium.
In a large bowl, beat the butter and brown sugar with an electric hand mixer until mostly smooth.
Add the eggs and vanilla, then continue beating until they’re fully incorporated.
In a medium-size bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and salt. Add these dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix until few streaks of flour remain.
Add the oats and chocolate chips and stir to combine.
Coat both sides of the waffle iron grid with nonstick spray.
Place a heaping tablespoon of dough onto each waffle section, allowing room for the cookies to spread. Close the lid and cook until the cookies are set and beginning to brown. This won’t take very long—2 or 3 minutes, depending on the heat of your waffle iron. The cookies should be soft when you remove them and will firm up as they cool.
Transfer the cookies to a wire rack to cool.
Repeat Steps 6 through 8 until the remaining batter has been waffled.

Notes:

Use a standard or Belgian-style waffle iron.

You can substitute the all-purpose flour with an equal amount of white whole wheat flour. This may make the cookies cook more quickly, so keep an eye on them.

Tips:

To expedite the cooking, try this: While one batch is on the waffle iron, scoop up heaping tablespoons of dough and set these portions along one side of the bowl’s interior. When one batch is finished, recoat the waffle iron with nonstick spray, plop the measured balls of dough onto the grid, and cook.

To freeze the cookie dough: Form the dough into balls, place them on a tray to freeze and then, once frozen, place the balls of dough into a ziptop bag. The frozen dough can go right onto the waffle iron (just add another minute to the cook time).

Don’t make the cookies too big. They have to be removed from the waffle iron while they’re still fairly soft. Anything bigger than a heaping tablespoon of batter will tend to yield cookies that become unwieldy and fall apart as you attempt to remove them.

Will It Waffle?
by Daniel Shumski

How many great ideas begin with a nagging thought in the middle of the night that should disappear by morning, but doesn’t? For Daniel Shumski, it was: Will it waffle? Hundreds of hours, countless messes, and 53 perfected recipes later, that answer is a resounding: Yes, it will! Steak? Yes! Pizza? Yes! Apple pie? Emphatically yes.

And that’s the beauty of being a waffle iron chef—waffling food other than waffles is not just a novelty but an innovation that leads to a great end product, all while giving the cook the bonus pleasure of doing something cool, fun, and vaguely nerdy (or giving a reluctant eater—your child, say—a great reason to dig in).