SUNFLOWER OATMEAL COOKIES…HAPPINESS IN A COOKIE!

Deeba @ PAB

16 years ago

“Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow. It’s what sunflowers do. “

Helen Keller

I LOVE baking, which is quite obvious I’m sure…& baking sometimes seems to be the best escape for me. Even when I’ve been run ragged, rushing the kids up & down & across town, doing grocery, laundry & every other silly thing under the sun, I come back home & am always ready for some baking therapy.

Found some lovely sunflowers growing at a friend’s place, & couldn’t resist the offer to take a few. So home I came, clutching a pretty buncha flowers in giddy excitement. Sunflowers just do this to me.

I think they are quite the brightest & most cheerful flowers; for Mondays, or any day for that matter!! The minute I saw the sunflowers, I just knew I would head home & bake sunflower seed somethings!

I was back to what I like doing best! Have been meaning to use a bagful of sunflower seeds for a while now, which my friend brought for me from Ukraine. She keeps carting these interesting ingredients across each time she visits coz she knows it’ll trigger some more baking passion in me.

She also brought along some yummy sachets of vanilla sugar. How could I not do justice to what was in the bag!! Browsed around the net & found these Sunflower Oatmeal Cookies on All Recipes, a site I often explore. The reviews were enough to send me baking…

Sunflower Oatmeal Cookies as adapted from Allrecipes

Ingredients:
White sugar – 1 cup
Brown sugar – 1 cup, packed
Butter – 1 cup, softened
Eggs – 2
Vanilla extract – 1 teaspoon
All-purpose flour – 1 1/2 cups
Whole-wheat flour – 1/2 cup (I substituted 1/2 cup plain flour with whole-wheat)
Baking powder – 1/2 teaspoon
Baking soda – 1 teaspoon
Rolled oats – 2 cups
Roasted and salted sunflower seeds – 1 cup
Flaked coconut – 1 cup (optional) / I didn’t use this
Vanilla sugar – 1 sachet/ 2 tsps ( part of my change to the original recipe)

Method:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
In a large bowl, cream together the white sugar, brown sugar, and butter until smooth.
Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the vanilla.
Combine the flour, baking powder, and baking soda; stir into the creamed mixture until just blended.
Mix in the rolled oats and sunflower seeds. Stir in coconut if desired. Drop dough by heaping teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets. Leave room for spreading. Sprinkle with some seeds & chocolate strands if you like.
Bake for 10 to 12 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the cookies begin to brown around the edge.
Allow cookies to set for a few minutes on the sheet before removing to wire racks to cool completely

Of course I have to do something different…& often. So while dropping the cookies on the sheet, I thought, hmmmmmmmm, HOW ABOUT A COOKIE CAKE! Have long been fascinated by a chocolate chip cookie cake picture I once saw, & this seemed a good time to try it. I think I made about 3 dozen cookies & the rest of the dough went into the cookie cake.

I pressed some cookie dough firmly into a lined 8″ Victoria sandwich tin & baked it for about 30-35 minutes, just until it became golden brown. Marked the segments as soon as it came out of the oven & let it cool in the tin. I left a small rim of paper coming up around the edges of the base to aid easy removal.

Got this brilliant dessert serving idea from this Cookie Dough Dessert by Ruth @ Ruth’s Kitchen Experiments where she had posted a similar dessert. Just the right way to serve this yummy cookie cake!!

Have a great sunshine day!

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