To be prepared
Thursday, September 10, 2009 at 8:06AM 
When I first begin to get sick, I begin to clean. Ambitiously.
It's not just scrubbing dishes or sweeping the floors or folding the laundry. It's cleaning the windows and flipping the mattresses and vacuuming under the fridge. When my mind is fuzzy with sickness, I can't stand a similar feeling of clutter in my surroundings.
It drives me bonkers. But at least, in the best of circumstances, my fits of crazy result in cookies.
Last Tuesday I organized the closets. Most specifically, the Closet We Dare Not Open. That's the closet in our little den, a stash and dash repository, the closet that still had sealed boxes from when we moved to this house two years ago.
Yes, you heard me right. Sealed boxes. And yes, it has been two years.
Don't look at me like that. You try moving with a toddler when you're already expecting your next and let's see how well you do in getting all your boxes unpacked.
Ahem. Now that we've thrown open the quite literal door on my secret shame, back to the present. And those boxes. These were the boxes of nonessentials - the last boxes we'd packed from our previous house, thrown together as we made our way out the door.
In one I found a storage container (empty) for CDs, an unopened package of paper, a sketchpad and some dice. In another, pictureless fames and ice cube trays. And in another, I found my recipe notebooks.
The pair of books, pale slate with Prussian blue trim, date back even further than the move to this house. They are from A Time Before; the time before a ring had ever been put upon my finger and before my child had ever been placed in my arms. A time before I started writing here.
My Mum had recipe folders when I was growing up. She'd snip out and tack in recipes from magazines and newspapers, these interspersed with handwritten cards bearing the bosom-held secret recipes of family and friends. Hers were fat and full with both the memory and the promise of delicious meals.
When I decided I it was time to become an adult, I started my own recipe notebooks. It seemed the Thing to Do. I'm a gatherer by nature, and had a considerable stockpile of magazines and notepads full of material ready and waiting. I remember stacking the clippings into neat little piles, considering my methods of categorization. I had Breakfasts, Soups, Salads, Breads, Sides, Vegetarian Mains, Meat, Poultry, Cakes, Pies, Frozen Desserts and Sweets. (All of this compulsion fell neatly in line with my established addiction to stationery.)
I was ready, at least recipe-wise, for Sort of Life I was Going to Lead. My books were as much a compilation of tried recipes as it was of the recipes I wanted to try in that future. I was going to be prepared.
Prepared for everything except baking cookies. In curating these books, I overlooked cookies entirely. Filled anticipation for future dinner parties that would surely require an elegant sweets course, I hopped, skipped, and jumped my way past biscuits and wafers and biscotti. The closest I come to a cookie is the solitary mention of brownies.
I think I thought that cookies were dull. I know. I was young and stupid. Cookies were one of the first things I'd learned to bake, due in large part to Mrs. Wakefield and those bags of morsels, and I believe I had the fool idea that adulthood was the time to move on from such childish pursuits.
Thank goodness for being lazy. And in love. I started those books years ago, but I never finished them. They went into the back of a closet, moved from apartment to apartment to house to house, untouched. Instead of collecting, I started cooking, and the next thing I knew I was here.
And the person that is here is a mum who bakes cookies. Often.
A move to rectify the lapse in those books' the cookie section is long overdue, and I have already got my choice for the first one in. These Chocolate-chunk Oatmeal Cookies with Pecans and Dried Cherries are sigh-inducing balance of sweet, salty and subtly sour. They are speckled and nubbly, with a crisp rim and a soft centre, and deep cracks that travel their surface. And oh my stars, they are perfectly delicious. So delicious that they deserve a fan club.
We can have the meetings at my place. Once I'm done cleaning.
Chocolate-chunk Oatmeal Cookies with Pecans and Dried Cherries
From Cooks Illustrated published May 2005.
Ingredients
1 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
1 cup pecans, toasted and chopped
1 cup dried sour cherries or cranberries, chopped coarse
4 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped into small pieces about the size of chocolate chips
3/4 cup (12 tablespoons, 1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened but still cool
1 1/2 cups packed dark brown sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C), with racks on the top and bottom thirds. Use parchment paper to line several standard baking sheets and set aside.
In a bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Set aside.
In another bowl combine the oats, pecans, dried cherries and chocolate.
In the bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, or with a hand mixer, cream together the butter and sugar on medium speed until light and fluffy, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. With the mixer on medium-low, add the egg and beat until incorporated.
Scrape down the sides of the bowl, turn the mixer down to low, and add the flour mixture to the bowl. Stir until just combined. Finally incorporate the oats, nuts, fruit and chocolate. Do not overmix. Turn off the mixer and use a rubber spatula to give the dough a final stir and make sure that all the ingredients are incorporated.
Using an ice cream scoop to measure 1/4 cup portions of dough. Roll these portions lightly between your hands, then place 8 on each baking sheet, spaced evenly. Wet your hands and lightly press the dough to a 1-inch thickness. Bake the cookies, two trays at a time, in a preheated oven for 12 minutes. Rotate the trays top to bottom and back to front and bake for another 8 minutes or until the cookies are uniformly golden, but still wet in the middle. You might think that they're undercooked, but you're wrong - resist the urge to overbake, they will set up further as they cool.
Remove from the oven and cool on the baking sheets for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack. Store cooled cookies in an airtight container at room temperature.
Makes 16.
Notes:
• Although the original recipe specifies table salt, I used kosher salt instead; I enjoy the uneven saltiness of kosher in cookies, but that is only a personal preference.
• Continuing on the topic of salt, I sprinkled the pecans with some fine grained sea salt when they were toasted. This subtle salinity hummed steadily beneath the complexity of the chocolate and cherries.
• Wanting a slightly more modest cookie, I divided the dough into 24 and reduced my cooking time accordingly.
Cooks Illustrated, baking, cherry, chocolate, cookie, dried fruit, nuts, oatmeal, recipe, snack 
Reader Comments (37)
I go through these phases too, but not due to sickness. A clean space just makes me feel... calmer. Clean house, calm mind. My boyfriend doesn't get it!
Those cookies look great - chock full of STUFF.
My husband and I moved a year and a half ago...still the guest bedroom sits with many taped up boxes that I never dug into. And now, we are packing yet again for a move in the next couple of weeks. Hopefully this time I will open them all? :)
I loved this story. I too have binders and folders full of recipes I have collected, a hard drive that is bursting at its megabites or whatever bites it has. But it always seems in the midst of all those recipes that I turn back, like you, to the ones of childhood. What a wonderful cookie recipe this is from your Mom!!!! They look incredible. I am going to make these this weekend!!
My mom is Cookie Lover Extraordinaire, and I'm truly her daughter. There is nothing better than a good cookie. (My mom loves your blog, by the way, but I don't know if she's ever commented).
These look delicious, and seem so appropriate for the first week of school. And what a shiny new baking sheet! Mine look like several large trucks rolled over them.
I'm amazed and impressed by your desire to clean when you are sick. When I am sick, I have a desire to crawl into bed and not talk to anybody. We too moved into our house when I had a toddler and was pregnant with our now 2.5 year old and we STILL have lots of boxes hidden around the house. My feeling is that we just dump them. If we haven't needed whatever is in there yet, we won't. Besides, I have my recipes notebooks safely sitting in the kitchen. :)
Like your notebooks, my mom had recipe binders. So of course I did the same when I started collecting. Recently it’s just a big pile of torn papers and bookmarked sites though! I really like this cookie recipe- sweet, salty and tangy in one. mmm!
What a delicious dessert! I love it!
The cookies look incredible and I am amazed at how perfectly round they are! If my cookies could only look like that.
I have been meaning to organize my recipes for months and months now. It was actually on my list of New Year's goals, yet a new New Year is upon us now. I think I will make it a goal to do it before 2010 arrives. My piles of magazines, printouts and the two huge metal file boxes that were handed down to me are taking over my area of the office.
Fabulous! A non-chocolate and oaty version of those "dude cookies" I wrote about a while back. That cherry and pecan combination is enough to make me die on the spot. Love the salting of the pecans idea! I am definitely trying these on the next rainy day!
These cookies look beautiful. I'm bookmarking the recipe!
Me too....weird. It alleviates my anxiety!
ummm my sweet tooth just starting pulsating. these cookies look like absolute perfection. I WILL make them... tonight. Ah, and cleaning closets is such a big job yet so gratifying, cheers to you!
Hi Tara
I was wondering did you sprinkle the sea salt on the pecans before they went into the oven or after they came out of the oven.
You sold me at "salty and subtly sour". I do love a salty cookie. :)
Bookmarked this!
Hilary, I get you! And the cookies are absolutely stuffed - when you first mix in everything it seems as though the dough won't hold it all. A few more stirs and then it all just holds together.
Jennifer, thank goodness we're not the only ones! When we moved here, I was unpacking boxes and realized we'd moved a box intended for charity donation not once, but twice, over three years. Best of luck with your move!
the Leftoverist, please say hello to your Mom for me! So lovely to hear that she likes the site. And, if I'm being honest, I have to tell you that that was a brand new cookie sheet - the first time it was used. Most of my sheets look like this.
Dana, I only want to clean when I first get sick - it's like I'm preparing for my inevitable cocooning. Once I'm truly sick, my dear husband pats my hand, leads me away from the dustpan and I then hit the covers. Hard.
fresh365, I think the search for the perfect recipe system is ongoing, especially as there are so many different ways we get our ideas these days - email, magazines, websites, books, notecards. It's tough to keep up! If you get any great ideas, please let me know.
Simply Life, thank you!
Shauna, the cookies are rolled first and then squashed to a disc shape before baking - this helps with their shape. If your kitchen is warm, chill the shaped dough a bit and that will also help them spread evenly. Best of luck with your project!
Shauna from Piece of Cake, your cookies looked amazing, so I take that as quite a compliment! Please report back if you do try them out.
Patricia Scarpin, I do hope you enjoy them!
Special K, thank goodness, I thought I was the only one. Thanks for the company. I think it is also just because I don't want to have to think about cleaning once I'm really sick. It's like if I get it all done, then I'm free and clear to stay in bed all day!
Sprouted Kitchen, thanks so much m'dear! I was tempted to leave my closet door open just so I could show off its orderly contents. It's no fun that all the work is hidden, but it does still feel good.
Jackie, sorry for not clarifying that; when the nuts are still warm from whatever way you roast them (I sometimes do oven, sometimes do dry skillet), I toss them through with the salt . The roasting brings out their natural oils to the surface, allowing the salt to stick.
Syin, I brought another batch of these to friends over the weekend; on his second cookie a friend asked me what was in them - he was surprised since dried cherries weren't usually his thing. These cookies changed his mind on them. I take that as a successful recipe! Salty and sweet always wins in my book.
This is one of my favorite recipes, but I leave out the cherries and fine chop the chocolate. The baking season is back on.
Dried cherries!!! The cookies look so good. And I suffer from the same skip-the-cookie recipe mistake. I always have gateaux recipes, fancy chocolate liqueur recipes, but never cookies. This one will be added to the pile. Thanks!
Those look amazing. Every time I feel like baking something I consider cookies, but they usually lose out to brownies/tarts/cakes/etc, just because cookies are often not as "exciting" as those things. These, however, look amazing! I love the fleck of red they have from the dried cherries. The next time I have the baking bug I might have to try these!
why are those cookies all the way in canada!? so.far.away. i'd make myself your friend so i could taste all you pretty food.
I clean like this too, I'm a virgo and like things nice and tidy. I also bake cookies all the time. In fact, I just did a Dorie Greenspan recipe last weekend and am planning on Cooks Illustrated Peanut Butter cookies tomorrow. I loves yours with the addition of dried cherries. And, kudos to you for moving with a toddler and expecting - NOT easy!
We moved to out new place almost 2 years ago...still have stuff that has not been looked at. Now onto food. These cookies look great. I like added dried cherries.
When I get sick I get into bed and pull the covers over my head. Don't call me, don't talk to me. Just make sure I have some chicken broth in the pantry!
I love chocolate chip cookies of all kinds and you have added dried cherries...that would make them divine, sick or not.
Love this post. Thanks!
these are my kind of cookies... and i'm moving soon and still have unpacked boxes from my last move. how did that happen?
These cookies look like they have everything you could want in a cookie! The oatmeal makes them HEALTHY right? :)
I had to laugh because we moved to this house over 2 yrs ago and the closet in the den is also our secret shame. I too clean when there's something in my life that I can't control. Thanks for writing this post, it made me smile.