Grosi's Chocolate Oat Cutout Cookies
These are Sam's grandmother's chocolate oat cookies.
Usually it is a mistake to make someone's family recipe, and this was no exception.
After one bite of the finished product the questions began.
"How much cocoa did you use?"
"What?"
"How much cocoa powder?"
"Uh, I emptied the container, might have been a bit more than the two tablespoons called for in the recipe."
"Are you sure? They don't taste as chocolatey as my grandma's cookies..."
Later, he took another sample cookie:
"This icing is pretty thick. How did you apply it?"
"With the back of a spoon."
"My grandma used to brush the icing on, it was much thinner...I'm just saying!"
"Which kind of oats did you use? Quick cooking or traditional?"
The wrong kind, naturally.
That evening:
"And can we talk about how chewy they are? Hers were much crispier..."
Can I mention that this was the amount of information I had to go on?
Regardless, these are super oaty, wholesome cookies. I had never made cut out cookies from a dough with oatmeal, but it worked surprisingly well. I chose to cut out the cookies in the shape of geese, in honour of today's St Martin's Day celebrations in Sursee.
I know it looks like a duck, but really, it's a goose.
150 g butter
250 g sugar
1 tsp vanilla
150 ml milk
2 tbsp cocoa powder
300 g oats
300 g flour
15 g baking powder
Glaze
5 tsp lemon juice
100 g powdered sugar
Cream butter, sugar, and vanilla.
Whisk together dry ingredients.
Alternately add milk and dry ingredients to the butter mixture. Mix sparingly.
Portion out the dough into three discs. Flatten and cover in plastic wrap. Let dough rest in the fridge for at least an hour.
When you are ready to bake:
Preheat oven to 180C / 350F / gas mark 4.
Using a bit of flour, roll out the dough to about half a centimeter thick. Cut out cookies into desired shape, brushing off any excess flour with a pastry brush.
Bake for about 10-12 min.
To make the glaze, whisk together the powdered sugar with lemon juice a teaspoon at a time until you get a runny glaze. Brush onto the cooled cookies.
For the beaks, brush with a little more glaze, and carefully put on some sprinkles. Alternatively, use some food colouring and brush on yellow beaks.
I used traditional rolled oats (grob or coarse in German) and enjoyed the chewy flavour. Sam is sure that his grandmother used the fine cut oats (I think the equivalent would be quick oats, but not instant), so either is possible. If you like, you can add additional flavour by toasting the oats in a dry frying pan or in the oven first.
Add the lemon juice only a small amount at a time and then stir well, it doesn't take much for it to get too runny.
You can't ruin the glaze. If it's too runny, add some more powdered sugar, and if it is too thick, add a little more lemon juice.
Instead of lemon juice you can use any number of spirits: rum, kirsch, williams etc.
