Salt & Pepper Oatmeal Cookies

One day I will do a post on my storage house filled with endless amounts of collectible glassware. I could seriously open a store or prop style at least a dozen food blogs monthly.

When we bought our country house, two storage spaces, in LA and NYC respectively were emptied and brought to Pennsylvania. One of the house’s most appealing features for me was the stand alone extra garage/storage house lined with shelves. The previous owner had a store in town and kept her inventory there. The salt and pepper shakers in the photos are part of a collection of umpteen.

The truth is, when it comes to photographing food, I am usually too rushed or in the wrong place (I am in NYC during the week) to put together a beautifully propped photo. I also still have yet to go through all my boxes and organize everything.  We’re only here on the weekends, so it’s been a slow process. Up until now, I’ve been pulling out a random dish here and there to use for photos. Hoping that will change once I get everything in order.

So onto the cookies – These were so easy it was ridiculous. I just added extra salt and some pepper to my favorite oatmeal cookie recipe and left out the cinnamon and raisins.

A bit under the gun with guests coming over for dinner,  I realized at the last minute I had no dessert to serve. When one has a baking blog, EVERYONE expects dessert when they visit. I quickly threw these together adding the salt and pepper twist so they were a little special but wrapped in a comforting old favorite.

When forming the cookies and placing them on the baking sheets, I used this great tutorial from Not Your Momma’s Cookie on How to Make Picture-Perfect Cookies and they did, indeed come out way better looking than my usual attempts.

The taste was wow. I was inspired to make a list of  recipes I would like to reinvent with and salt and pepper.

Just warning you.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup butter
• 1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1+1/2 cups AP flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1+1/2  teaspoon of salt
• 2 tablespoons black pepper (I used fresh ground)
• 3 cups Quaker oats

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
• Line two cookie sheet with parchment paper.
• Combine flour, baking soda, pepper and salt in a bowl, whisk or sift together and set side.
• Beat butter and sugars until creamy.
• Add eggs and vanilla and beat until combined.
• Add flour mixture in thirds.
• Use a tablespoon or cookie to form cookies and drop onto baking sheets (or check out the tutorial above).
• Bake 10-12 minutes or less depending on how gooey and soft you like them.
• Remove from oven and transfer to wire rack to cool.