How to Bake the Best Chewy Oatmeal Cookies and Ultranutty Pecan Bars

Today in America's Test Kitchen, Julia and Bridget share the secrets to making foolproof

oatmeal

cookies

. Adam reviews prepping bowls with Bridget Lisa reviews the

best

cake stands and I make Julia great

pecan

and

pecan

bars

. It all shows up here in America's test kitchen when most people make

oatmeal

cookies

, they just use the recipe on the back of the container, that's right, because if anyone should know how to make a great oatmeal cookie, they are people who make oatmeal, but that iconic recipe has some problems, the cookies have a very doughy texture. and there's almost no oat flavor to speak of, so we decided to give this recipe a much-needed makeover.

We wanted a

chewy

cookie with a great oat flavor and it starts with using the right oats, so here we have old fashioned rolled oats and that's the classic. oats are used in a note cookie, however we have seen some recipes that use quick and instant oats but this is a no no, these oats have been partially cooked and then dried again and have almost no flavor and Its texture is very sticky. almost like wallpaper paste okay so they're not available anymore and honestly you don't want to use steel cut oats. This is not for cookies.

This is for a bowl of oatmeal in the morning. A big, thick plate of pork in the morning. About that, yes, I would, so here we have three cups of old-fashioned rolled oats and it's the same thing you'll see on the back of the container, so no changes yet. Now let's look at the dry ingredients, here we have a cup. of all-purpose flour, that's a slight change, the recipe in the jar has a little more flour, but by reducing the flour and leaving the amount of oats the same you will get more oat flavor. We will add a little to this. salt, this is three quarters of a teaspoon of salt and a little bit of baking soda, which is the leavening, this is half a teaspoon of baking soda and that's a little bit less too, it's going to make those cookies a little bit less doughy, okay , you don't want puffy cookies, no.

You know, the back of the container box made a very doughy inside cookie with crispy edges, but as soon as that cookie cooled, it had a uniform texture that was stale, okay, we want crispy edges,

chewy

center, it I have and another way to We get a nice chewy center with crispy edges. Looking at the type of fat, now that well-known recipe uses 20 tablespoons of butter, which adds a lot of flavor, almost masking too much of the oatmeal flavor, but also makes the cookie too doughy. We narrowed it down to just four tablespoons of butter and half a cup of vegetable oil.

Now what this does is it reverses the ratio of saturated fat to unsaturated fat, which again leads to a chewier center and that's what we're looking for. you use a liquid oil like this, you're talking about a bowl shaped cookie, so no stand mixer needed, but to get this butter, we're going to have to melt it, so that's four tablespoons of unsalted butter over medium heat -high. While we're melting it, we can also brown it because that really helps the flavor of the oats shine. We're going to cook this for a minute or two after it starts to melt until it gets that nice golden color, now I figure since we're stirring everything together we're not using an electric mixer which also helps prevent cookies from forming because We're not putting air into it, that's right, I love this, simpler and better, so this is not a time when you want to leave. because that butter can go from brown to burnt so I like to swirl the pan too, it gives me something to do but it also helps brown the butter a little more evenly oh there it goes oh that smells so good yeah let's go well in a bowl , so in the hot butter we're going to add our spices and our spices are just this little bit of cinnamon, just a quarter teaspoon and this is a marked difference from the recipe that we've been talking about which had nutmeg and a ton of cinnamon, we found that it actually tastes like a spice cookie, not an oatmeal cookie, so just a little bit of cinnamon does the job, yes, and by adding it to the butter you are really bringing out its flavor.

We're going to add our oil and again this is half a cup of vegetable oil. We're going to add our sugars now, two types of sugars, brown sugar and white sugar, that combination adds good flavor and crispy edges, so it's three quarters of a cup. brown sugar half cup white sugar let's mix this up I love bowl shaped cookies they are so easy to make I don't even

bake

them I just eat the dough that's the dough I've been known to make that's why it mixes in a bowl, serves one, now let's add the eggs, now the original recipe had one egg, but we added an extra yolk which adds richness without being greasy, so an egg and a yolk at the end, but not least, a little . of vanilla this is a teaspoon between the brown sugar, the brown butter and that little bit of vanilla oh yes oh yes very good now we are going to add our flour mixture now this dough is going to get very thick and that is good because I believe many doughs oats add too much liquid thinking the oats need it, but that creates a pasty texture.

You want a firm dough so it stays nice and crispy. Last but not least, our three cups of old-fashioned oatmeal and the most. controversial ingredient in this whole cookie raisins this is half a cup of raisins you are not a fan of raisins I am actually a fan of raisins but just half a cup is all we are going to add they are optional I am choosing to include them here sorry it is okay, I'm going to make you like them, I have no choice, you have no choice, so you can see how thick this dough is, so I'm going to switch to a spatula and make sure everything is incorporated here.

It probably would have been easier to stir if you hadn't added the raisins. I think we're pretty well incorporated, so I have some baking sheets placed on top. there, if you don't mind, thank you and, of course, they are lined with parchment paper. Now we're just going to portion these cookies out and if you want about three tablespoons of dough per cookie, I'm going to use a great handy scoop that measures out about three tablespoons of dough, these are great to have on hand and I'm going to portion them all out and if there's any left over dough, I'll go back and add bits to the cookies that seem to need them. leftover dough here's our last cookie there now before we put them in the oven we want to flatten the cookies a little bit because this dough is so thick that the cookies won't spread on their own so we're going to give them a head start and the key To do this is to wet your hands because this dough is very sticky, so with wet hands I'm just going to press each cookie until it's about two and a half inches in diameter.

I like to make one and then measure. see if it's on the nose then that's your template that's my template okay so that pan looks perfect and as always we're going to make these one pan at a time that way they

bake

evenly throughout we're going to bake them at 375 degrees for about 10 minutes in the pan until set on the edges but still nice and chewy in the middle, traveling with a delicate cake can feel like you're tempting fate and that's why you need a cake stand, we tested these five have a Priced between $12 and $26, we loaded them with eight-inch, nine-inch, and ten-inch cakes, including shallow cross cakes and taller cream cakes, then took them for a walk around the block and loaded them into the car. as we drove down three miles of bumpy roads the bad news a ton of cakes bit the dust they slipped and slid into the containers they were crushed to a pulp they were smashed with lids too low I mean look at this this is too flat and soft What are you going to put there?

Scarves. Jewelry. It's not a cake. This one has containers for already cut slices. It's very cute but it doesn't really make sense. It's just a big, flat tupperware, but this is our favorite. His cakes each arrived in perfect condition. Once this handle helped us carry it safely, it has a small grippy base on the inside that helps keep the cakes anchored inside, plus it expands and then this insert creates a second level so you can carry two little cakes deep at a time and rotates so you can hold 28 filled pastries. eggs, it has a nice high dome, they fit even on the tallest cake we make, which is our mile high lemon meringue cake.

This thing is almost six inches tall. It's called the Progressive Prep Works Folding Party Carrier because it collapses flat for storage when you're not carrying it. cake for 23 dollars, your problems with transporting the cake are over, oh, smell, I do it, I do it, I do it now. Knowing when these cookies are done baking can be a little tricky because they don't get much color. You can see they are just getting started. so they brown around the edges instead but the center looks underdone and that's perfect, that's how you get a chewy center and also if you touch it on the side you can see the edges are just starting to set , so that's perfect, okay, so We're going to let these cookies sit on this hot pan for about five minutes, they're going to continue to bake a little bit and set up, and then we're going to transfer them to a wire rack and let them cool completely.

In the meantime, I'm going to throw the second batch in the oven, so here are two batches of cookies and they're ready to eat. Yes, no more waiting. Oh look how nice and chewy in the center, very crunchy on the edges, it really has almost a caramel flavor, but I can put that oatmeal in there. It tastes like toasted oats, that's right, they have a really complex flavor thanks to that brown butter and that little bit of cinnamon, you know, it's not so overpowering most of the time. when I eat oatmeal cookies it's like a spice cookie with a little bit of oats, you definitely change the equation, it's oats first, the cinnamon takes a backseat, finally an oatmeal cookie recipe that lets the oats shine to make them At home, start by using a combination. of vegetable oil and butter and brown that butter to deepen its flavor reduce the spices to just a pinch of cinnamon and use granulated sugar and brown sugar for a caramel-like flavor mix the cookie dough by hand adding oats and raisins old-fashioned just before baking and there you have it from our test kitchen to your kitchen the most excellent, oatmeal cookies with more oats, oatmeal mc, oatmeal face is what you put in your coat, meet the unsung heroes of the test kitchen, mini prep bowls and adam is here to show us how these little bowls can be a big help to the home cook.

You know some people call these plastic balls mison and you know the phrase misonplace, which loosely translates from the French franchise "put in place" and just refers to preparing all the ingredients before you start cooking, so you want having everything chopped, prepped, measured, separated and ready to roll so you can execute a recipe really smoothly and efficiently. We now tested seven different sets of these little mini brew balls in the price range. It was about 5.49 up to 22. The materials ranged from you can see those green ones down there, those are recycled materials, there's actually a lot of bamboo dust in there, we have a lot of glass next to those, then we have stainless steel and these last ones.

They are silicone and how do we test them? You ask why we put ingredients in them. We remove the ingredients. Ground pepper, spices, seasonings, prepared vegetables for, say, chicken and dumplings or something like that. We evaluate them based on their ease. they were to fill how easy they were to empty whether they were microwave safe dishwasher safe how durable they were and we tested that when you dropped them from the counter to the floor, the sets that testers liked the least were the silicone ones and that's because They're a little rubbery and mushy, they're a little shaky to handle, I'm sure I could see if you had ingredients in there, you gave them a little squeeze, they were able to come out, they flew out, although sometimes they wouldn't because these are a little static too, so which made spices and powders difficult to get out, the stainless steel bowls for example worked much better, they were solid, durable, easy to fill and empty, had a nice wide rim to grip on, but they are not.

Microwave safe and that kept them out of the top slot. Also, this was the most expensive game we had. Glass really dominates the market. Easy to fill. Easy to empty. Dishwasher safe. Microwave safe. Oven safe. It resists stains, it resists odors, I mean they do pretty much everything now. In the end I really liked having different sizes. This was actually our favorite game. This is the Anchor Hocking six-piece nesting preparation ball set. There are 11. You can see that the balls have a nice wide opening, so they were easy to fill. Easy to empty. They have a little. the edge on the edge, so it was easygrab them.

The only downside is that these were the only bowls that broke in our durability test when dropped off the counter, but they are reasonably solid glass so hopefully they won't fly. off the counter at home too often there was a second place these are also from Anchor Hocking these are the custard cups they are all six ounces that set is 5.49 but the testers really appreciated having the different sizes and the nesting factor so that's the winner Well our winner was the Anchor Hocking Six Piece Nesting Prep Bowl Set and it's 11 pieces and then our

best

buy was the Anchor Hocking Custard Cups and those were 5.49.

It's pretty easy to turn almost any cake into a cookie bar, like a cheesecake bar or a lemon bar. bar, but pecan

bars

are a different story, you can't just place that cake in a rectangular pan and expect it to work because the sticky cream filling is too messy to eat out of hand, but don't worry, we have to show you. we how to make the best pecan bars, that's right julianne, we can't make pecan bars like we do all the other bars, in fact, we're going to have to rework the recipe completely, we're also going to work on bringing that pecan flavor to the forefront and at the center of time, I know.

I have some nuts in the oven. Help me get them out. You can bet it's amazing, so we've roasted these nuts at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes. Oh, they smell good, yes, you smell very aromatic. Yes, they are very aromatic. We tested the recipe with toasted and untoasted nuts and while the smooth layers darkened both nuts we found that the pre-toasted nuts were much browner and had a more complex flavor that doesn't surprise me at all well we are going to let them cool and While we do that, we will begin to make our base, so most bar cookie recipes require a food processor to cut cold butter into flour.

We found a much simpler recipe, so we started with one and three-quarter cups of flour, six and a half tablespoons of sugar. teaspoon of salt and we're going to have eight tablespoons of melted unsalted butter, this replaces our cold butter, wow, that's really quick, it's a lot easier than dragging that food processor all the way in and it's going to create a nice cake-like crust for us. shortbread cookie that can hold the weight of the nuts, the frosting, and cook really well because that's the whole point of a bar cookie, you can eat it right out of the box, you don't need any pork or a knife, so we're just going to mix this flour together. and butter together and you'll know it's ready when it starts to crumble in your hand and forms a ball.

Oh look, can you bring our frying pan closer? She bet it's fine, so it looks like your standard 9-by-13-inch metal skillet. Absolutely, and we made this great aluminum sling that will work to our advantage towards the end when we're trying to take it out to cool it, so I'm just going to take scoop sized portions of a tablespoon and place them around the pan and this. it's very easy because it's not formed like in the food processor you know the texture is right and it can't be spread this is just a pressed crust it's just a pressed crust so once we have all these balls let's go a We use our hands and our palms to evenly distribute this crust.

My type of cooking is cooking, you can only use your hands like you're supposed to. Move utensils out of the way. My grandmother cooked by hand. Oh yeah, she's putting it on. hands in the food, okay, so we're looking to make sure that the crust is absolutely flat and evenly distributed on the bottom of the pan. Okay, like you did a good job. Thank you. Okay, our nuts have cooled down. Our crust is ready. let's start making this dressing, let's make it so that there is half a cup of corn syrup left in the bowl. To this we will add three quarters of a cup of brown sugar.

We will also add seven tablespoons of melted butter. This is already starting to look good. a teaspoon of vanilla and half a teaspoon of salt. I'm just going to give it a good mix. We tried this recipe with all corn syrup and it left it tasting very flat. We tried it with honey and although it was slippery, wet and sticky. bar was a honey bar was a honey bar the flavor was too prominent what we found is that sugar and corn syrup are the perfect combination so that you get that loose corn syrup texture, so it's not like You might break your tooth, but I absolutely got the taste of brown sugar, that makes sense.

I think we're ready to add our nut. Oh, let me help you with that. Thanks, we'll do the walnut shimmy. We can do the nutty shimmy, but we're going to add everything. of these nuts, now that there are a lot of nuts for that dressing, now that I'm looking at it, I know it's crazy, yeah, it's nice to have all these nuts really works in our favor, not only is it great for the flavor, but it adds a lot of texture. to the bar, so we've got some pecans in our sticky, slippery topping and we've also got some that are baking on top that will be nice and crunchy and give you a nice snap when you bite into them.

Okay, let's put them on our crust now. I noticed that you know this crust is not partially baked and usually when you make a bar cookie you prepare the crust, so what's the story here? Well, we're not partially baked because we're going to cook these bars on the lowest rack of our oven first to make sure the bottom cooks and browns nicely. Second, we're extending the cooking time to make sure the crust is cooked all the way through and finally, you'll notice that we didn't cook this dressing in this oh, that's a good point we skipped.

In that step we simplify the recipe so we can make it faster and better, this syrup will cook evenly over this crust and it will be so magical that you sold me and you also sold me that we don't use a mixer. We don't use a food processor, we don't even use the stove, I mean this is the perfect one bowl recipe, I mean that's the whole point of making a quick and easy ultra nutty bar to make it as easy and simple as possible. possible, so I'm going to spread these nuts over the crust evenly and it's okay if some of the crust comes off because like I said, it will cook and melt and distribute evenly over the crust.

I think it's ready, we have some nuts on the bottom. have some nuts on top and those little areas and spots that aren't covered are fine, the high temperature that we are cooking these bars at will ensure that all this nice stickiness completely melts onto the bar, so I'm going to put this nut bar on the oven at 350 degrees for 25 minutes, that's it, this dessert is all about showing off the flavor of the nuts, which is why you need to toast them before baking the bars. You might think this means we're toasting the nuts twice, but not so that the nuts are actually toasted, which dramatically brings out their flavor through the mayard reaction.

They need to reach at least 300 degrees and stay there for several minutes and the topping just does that. You don't get so hot oh man okay this looks like a totally different animal than when you put it on it looks so good absolutely that's because it's ready it's bubbling evenly on top it looks like all the sauce is evenly distributed man, that smells amazing, it just smells. like pecan pie it really does but we can't eat it now yes obviously it looks a bit like lava yes it would take about an hour and a half before we can eat it to cool down yes but before making that.

I'm going to sprinkle this nice flaky sea salt on it because we plumped up the lily a little bit. What is sugar without a little salt? Oh, that sea salt. I love the idea of ​​those crunchy, salty bits on top of something that's quite sweet, so this. The bar cooled for an hour and a half I think we are ready to cut I can't wait I'm going to use our aluminum sling to lift it up Could you take the bottom off? Oh, you know, oh, look how it turns out well. out of the pan I love that sling trick okay so look at that slide coming out of the foil the edges are going to be a little firmer than the center so once I remove it from the foil I'm going to cut off a little bit of the edge and then we're going to do it all right, I hope you're not going to throw away those decorations, they look delicious, like I could crinkle them into our ice cream or something, I think we should absolutely waste them.

I don't want to, no, they look amazing. Can we eat them? I thought you'd never ask. I'm going to take the one right above in the first test. You can pick it up, yeah, bless you, bless you, oh man that's good and that crust is nice and sturdy. and as you mentioned before, it has a very nice cookie consistency, but doesn't crumble in my hand. I can pick it up and hold it pretty easily, that's true, because we made sure it was cooked and nicely browned on the bottom, oh yeah. I forgot that crust was raw, we didn't bake it, damn you did it, these are the best pecan bars I've ever had, thank you very well done, thanks for the nuttier pecan bars, use a whopping 4 cups of nuts and be sure to toast them to bring out their rich, deep flavor.

Create a sturdy but tender crust by making an easy-press dough and skipping the partial baking, from our test kitchen to your kitchen, the best nutty flavored pecan bars recipe. You can get this recipe and all of this season's recipes along with our tastings and tests and select episodes on our website americastestkitchen.com thanks for watching america's test kitchen what did you think? leave a comment and let us know what recipes you're into I'm excited to make it o you can just say hello. You can find links to today's recipes and reviews in the video description and don't forget to subscribe to our channel.

See you later. I will see you later.