Iterations on the high altitude cookie recipe
Oct 06, 2025I've surprised myself to find that I enjoy baking that past few years. I never bothered with it before because I don't enjoy cooking with a recipe - I am an instinctive, inspired chef. Give me anything - any ingredients, and I'll make something with them. For this reason meal planning is a real headache for me.
Anyway, I've been making this cookie recipe for about a year now, and after a couple of months I started creating various iterations of it.
https://www.dougheyed.com/giant-oatmeal-cookies/#wprm-recipe-container-4415
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups walnuts
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 1/2 cups old fashioned oats
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 cup cold unsalted butter cubed
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1 cups packed dark brown sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 tbs. vanilla extract
- 8 oz chopped dark chocolate
The gist is simply that I subbed either the flour, or the sugar, or both.
Instead of sugar, I found that two cups of dates blended in the cuisinart is even better than sugar. Deeper, milder and yummier.
I also found that I could mix up 2 cups of nuts (my fav is to use pecans) and only add one cup of flour, or sub the oats and it would be fine too. Polenta or corn meal work pretty well, but make sure you use flour too - I subbed that for the flour and added oats and found the cookies crumbled apart really easily.
Also, a dollop of lard (or left over bacon fat) always makes the cookies better. My dallops are about 1/4 cup or just under.
The latest iteration turned out really delicious, where I subbed 1 egg for a dollop of almond butter and a slosh of condensed milk (more on that later) and left the oats out entirely. I also had a ton of really hard stone fruit from my CSA so I decided to jam it in here with some almonds...Here's the recap:
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda (this has been packed up - we're moving, so I just left it out)
- 1 cup unsalted butter cubed
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1 eggs
- 1 tbs. vanilla extract
- 5 chopped unripened plums
- 1.5 cups almonds coarse chopped
- One glug of condensed milk (normal milk or cream or yogurt are all fine)
I make small cookies and baked them at 300 for about 12 minutes.
As they say in Ratatouille "you have to try things that may not work" :)
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