Chocolate Oatmeal Barley Cookies

Yes, barley. What a magnificent idea! Favorite and I were planning on tasting a very delicious sounding beer which seemed to need an equally delicious chocolate cookie to have with it. I of course turned to my trusty Ultimate Cookie Book, and found a recipe for chocolate oatmeal cookies. They looked dark, rich, and delicious, they used melted chocolate AND chocolate chips, and each was topped with a pecan halve. How could I lose? But, to make them even MORE special, Favorite had the brilliant idea of replacing some of the flour with crushed roasted barley, which he had of course in his brewing supply room. After I stopped beating myself up over why I hadn't thought of that before I got down to making the cookies. I only made a half batch since we also have cornbread, and marshmallows to eat. It was pretty much a typical chocolate cookies recipe, beat the butter and sugar, add the cooled melted chocolate, eggs, and vanilla, and then gradually add in the dry ingredients. I had taken 1/4 of a cup of roasted barely and used the grind feature on my mini prep to render it into dust with a few pieces of hull in there. I put this powder into the bottom of my measuring cup and added flour to make the amount I needed in total. I added this to the batter and then stirred in the oats (chopped a bit in the mini prep because they were old fashioned instead of quick cooking) and chocolate chips. I scooped the dough into heaps on my sheets, topped each with a pecan halve and put them in the oven. The smell was incredible.



The first batch, second batch and so on came out and all seemed to have on failing... they were all flat as pancakes!! Again I am having this problem. This time, however, I think I have REALLY found the solution. I had thought before that my dough was too warm, and tried chilling it; I thought that the butter was inferior, so I switched to brand name; I thought I was beating too much air into the mixture, so I became dainty with my beating of the butter. None of these "solutions" seemed to solve my problem, so I tried one more. I turned up the oven. My thought was, well if the oven is lower in temperature than it's saying it is, the heat would be enough to melt the dough without cooking it all the way. If I turn the heat up, the outside should cook faster giving it a better chance to set its shape.



So on my last batch I turned the oven from 375 to 385 and gave it ample time to heat up. I made sure to put the cookies on a sheet that was NOT still warm from the oven and I baked them for 9 minutes, right in the middle of the recommended 8-10. They came out... fatter!








I had used the same cookie scoop to make the cookies and you could clearly tell that the ones baked in the hotter oven were significantly smaller in diameter. They were chunkier, which meant they had more delicious interior to enjoy. I think I have finally found my cookie solution!