Chocolaty Double Crunchers — The Wednesday Dinner Cookie

The week before the Vargas job. Brayden is fifty weeks old. Two weeks until his first birthday. Cody’s pop-up double-service is on its second Tuesday. The Singh-Patel family had us over for dinner Wednesday night — the first non-catering meal at a non-family-member home in our adult life as parents.

The chocolaty double crunchers are a sandwich cookie — two chocolate-chip-and-oat cookie rounds with a peanut-butter-and-powdered-sugar filling pressed between them. The cookies are sturdy enough to ship and rich enough to feel like a small dessert. I had developed the recipe in 2017 when Aunt Patty had requested a cookie that could survive a UPS shipment to Hannah’s college visit in Stillwater. The cookie has been in the rotation since.

The technique on a sandwich cookie is the cookie-to-filling ratio. Too much cookie and the filling gets lost. Too much filling and the cookies cannot hold together. The right ratio is a filling that is approximately one third the volume of a single cookie round, pressed firmly between two rounds, set in the refrigerator for an hour to firm up.

Sunday I made twenty-four sandwich cookies. Twelve for the freezer, twelve for the week. The cookies will travel down to Mama in the Wednesday mail-pack. Carol Bryant will get four in the Memphis envelope I am sending Thursday in advance of the Bryant’s flight Saturday.

The blog’s small Sunday-publish rhythm continues. The catering business has been the small foreground of the small year’s work. The cookbook in its small online-store. The small recurring-clients (Singh family, Yates family, the corporate-luncheon brokerage) anchor the small reliable-revenue stream. The small one-off-jobs round out the small income.

Carol Bryant has been on the small Friday-call rhythm. Carol calls at five PM Tulsa time (six PM Memphis time). The call lasts twenty minutes. The conversation moves through Brayden, the small Bryant-cookbook collaboration, the small Memphis-news. The small grandmother-relationship continues to deepen.

Chocolaty Double Crunchers

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 10 min | Total Time: 30 min | Servings: 36 cookies

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup old-fashioned oats
• 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup crispy rice cereal

Instructions

1. Preheat oven. Heat oven to 350°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.
2. Cream butter and sugars. In a large bowl, beat softened butter, granulated sugar, and brown sugar together until light and fluffy, about 2–3 minutes.
3. Add egg and vanilla. Beat in the egg and vanilla extract until fully combined.
4. Mix dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt. Gradually add the dry mixture to the butter mixture, stirring until just combined.
5. Fold in mix-ins. Stir in the oats, chocolate chips, and crispy rice cereal. The dough will be thick — that’s what gives these their crunch.
6. Scoop and flatten. Drop rounded tablespoons of dough onto the prepared baking sheets about 2 inches apart. Gently press each ball down slightly with the palm of your hand.
7. Bake. Bake for 9–11 minutes, until the edges are set but the centers still look slightly underdone. Do not overbake — they firm up as they cool.
8. Cool. Let cookies rest on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 105 | Protein: 2g | Fat: 5g | Carbs: 15g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 55mg