Monday morning, before our walkathon, Jon and I dropped off cookies at my office. I had to get Sunday night’s baking off of my hands…it’s dangerous having all those cookies around the house!
In-Young, a reader and real-life cookie taster, emailed me to thank me for the cookies and to ask a couple questions for her sister:
“You’re the best!
I saw your post this morning about the mocha mint cookies and I thought to myself, ‘Dammit! Greg’s on vacation this week. I’m missing out!’ How could I ever doubt you?
By the way, my sister went to the grocery store the other day to try and make your chocolate chip cookies (I gushed about them). She wanted me to ask you, do you have to grind the oatmeal yourself? Or, can you buy ground oatmeal? And where do you find dark brown sugar? Apparently Jersey doesn’t have it readily available. Go figure.”
Thanks, In-Young! It's funny how I got into work earlier on my day off than I usually do on my days on. Go figure, indeed…
And now for your sister’s questions, which, I have to admit, made me think of this song from The Clash.
I used a food processor to grind my oatmeal, but a blender would do a
fine job as well. Unfortunately, I’ve never come across preground oatmeal at the grocery store, so I think your sister will have do the grinding herself with a food processor, blender, or maybe one of those plunger-operated choppers. I used a plunger chopper once to make cookies with ground-up oatmeal at Mumma’s. (We couldn’t find the blade to her food processor…) The texture of the oatmeal was a little coarser than if I had used a food processor, but the cookies still came out great. I’m sorry to say this, but I don’t think there’s a store-bought shortcut to the ground-up oatmeal.
As for the dark brown sugar, your sister must be walking right by it in the baking section of her grocery store. Believe me: If I can find dark brown sugar in my grocery store your sister can find it in hers! And I've seen Jersey grocery stores...they go on for days! Nevertheless, both dark and light brown sugar are usually on a lower shelf next to the bags of white sugar, near all the flour and other baking stuff like chocolate chips, extracts, and cake mixes. Tell her that brown sugar is almost always packaged in boxes, not in paper sacks. Maybe that will help her spot it.
