Chocolate Crunch Cookies

I feel like I need to get back into practice baking cookies after a long summer off, since I have my United Way Hallowe'en bake sale coming up on October 29th.  I haven't made this recipe in a while, but it always turns out well now, after I made some tweaks to the recipe.  Notice a recurring theme in the recipes here? ;)

In Ontario, the Liquour Control Board of Ontario - or the good old LCBO - produces an absolutely beautiful magazine called "Food and Wine" and they also feature recipes without booze in them.  This one was included in a story called "Cafe Culture", but I don't remember the name of the cafe in Ottawa where it originated.  The recipe uses a lot of butter and, as I discovered the first time I made them, they spread like crazy in the oven.  Since the instructions called for a 3 tbsp. scoop of dough - that's the size of a metal ice cream scoop - they all ran together and browned too much.  When I tried to lift them off the cookie sheet, they were so delicate that I ended up with cookie "granola".  My version of the recipes uses less sugar, with no difference in taste, and they're much smaller cookies.  They're also easier to handle when cooling and you get twice as many from the batch!  The "crunch" comes from the Rice Krispies, the oats and the nuts.

Chocolate Crunch Cookies

1-1/2 cups/3 sticks butter, softened
3/4 cup brown sugar
3/4 white sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 cups oats (regular, not quick cooking)
2 cups Rice Krispies cereal
1-1/2 cups chocolate chips
1/ cup chopped walnuts or pecans

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Prepare baking sheets with no-stick spray or parchment paper, which is my preference.  Normally I would use my stand mixer to blend this recipe, but there's so much batter I use the largest mixing bowl I own and a hand mixer.  In bowl, blend butter and sugars until fully incorporated.  Blend in eggs and vanilla, set aside.  In separate bowl, sift or whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt.  Add dry mixture to wet slowly with mixer.  Next, blend in oats, Rice Krispies, chocolate chips and nuts with a spatula, until well mixed.  Make sure you mix right to the bottom of the bowl, to ensure all the flour mixture is blended in fully.

This is a very "wet" batter, so fill a glass or cup with hot water to dip your scoop or spoon into for each cookie.  I use a 1 tbsp sized ice cream scoop, which looks like the size of a melon baller.  At this size, 8 cookies per sheet bake very well, without spreading into each other.  After scooping out cookies, flatten lightly with a moistened fork.  Bake for 3-1/2 minutes, remove and reverse pans and bake for an additional 3-1/2 minutes.  These times are based on my oven settings.

The cookies will appear underdone when removing from the oven, but that's how they should look.  Let cookies cool for a mininum of two minutes, or they will crumble when lifting them out.  When using this size of scoop, the yield will be 5 dozen or 60 cookies!

I was told last night not to expect them to last for the office gang...