Claire Saffitz Makes The Best Oatmeal Cookies | Dessert Person

In this episode, Claire Saffitz makes the best oatmeal cookies. This is the Oat & Pecan Brittle Cookies recipe from Dessert Person. This chewy, butterscotchy oat cookie might not be the kind you can casually whip up on a whim. But, if you go through the steps to make it, like making the pecan brittle, grinding the oats, and browning the butter, you will be rewarded with hands-down the most delicious oat cookie you’ve ever tried. Somewhere between a lacy cookie and a chewy one, it’s giant, buttery, and sweet-salty. Make them along with Claire and remember to keep some of the dough frozen so you’re never more than 20 minutes away from a perfect warm cookie. Subscribe for more Dessert Person content from Claire!

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Oat and Pecan Brittle Cookies

Special Equipment:
Stand mixer
Food processor

Ingredients:
PECAN BRITTLE:
1 1/4 cups coarsely chopped pecans (5oz / 142g)
3/4 cups granulated sugar (5.3oz / 150g)
4 tablespoons unsalted butter (2 oz / 57g)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon Diamond Crystal kosher salt

COOKIES:
2 sticks unsalted butter (8 oz/ 227g), cut into tablespoons
1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour (6.1oz / 173g)
2 teaspoons Diamond Crystal kosher salt (0.22 oz / 6g)
1 teaspoon baking soda (0.21 oz / 6g)
2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats, not quick-cooking (7 oz / 200g)
3/4 cup packed dark brown sugar (5.3 oz / 150g)
1/2 cup granulated sugar (3.5 oz / 100g)
2 large eggs (3.5 oz / 100g) cold from refrigerator
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Video Breakdown:
0:00 Start
0:21 Intro to Oat and Pecan Brittle Cookies
0:44 Show Intro / Animation
1:00 Oat and Pecan Brittle Cookies Recipe
1:38 Special Equipment / Ingredients
2:37 Toast Pecans / Make Brittle
6:57 Brown The Butter
8:41 Mix The Batter
15:23 Bake Cookies
16:07 Taste / Wrap
17:13 Rick Martinez

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Dessert Person Cookbook
Photographer: Alex Lau
Food Stylist: Sue Li
Prop Stylist: Astrid Chastka

Video Series:
Producer/Director: Vincent Cross
Camera Operator: Calvin Robertson
Sound Engineer/Music: Michael Guggino
Editor: Brooke Shuman

Animation Credits:
Character Designer/Animator: Jack Sherry
Character Rigger: Johara Dutton
Background/Prop Designer: M. Cody Wiley
Background Illustrator: Jagriti Khirwar

Hey everyone i’m claire saffits welcome to my home kitchen today i’m going to show you one of my favorite recipes from the book it is one of my favorites in the book one of my favorite layer cakes in the book and it is one of my favorites in the

Book this is getting so this is ridiculous whatever i really like it what do i say about it they’re all good what what can i say i wouldn’t put in the recipe if it wasn’t good hey everyone i’m claire saffits welcome to my home kitchen today i’m going to show you

The most delicious cookie recipe that is also extremely fussy full disclosure it’s going to use a lot of equipment and dishes but i promise you it’s worth it i would not put it in the book if it wasn’t worth it and to me it is like the end all be all of cookies

It is my oat and pecan brittle cookie Do do I feel very strongly that as a recipe developer i’m not going to tell you to do something in your home kitchen that i would not do in mine so generally that means not asking you to get a bunch of pieces of equipment out not having to do

A lot of dishes because like i don’t want to do that at home either but every once in a while i make an exception because the recipe demands it and it is worth it so for these oat and pecan brittle cookies you do need a food processor and a stand mixer

And also you have the brown butter and you make a pecan brittle and then you have to chill the dough overnight this is not for the faint of heart but you can do it so equipment food processor stand mixer small saucepan obviously baking sheets the ingredients are actually very very straightforward and

We’re going to do a lot of important transformation of those ingredients we have pecans i’ve already chopped them eggs butter cut into pieces you actually want your eggs to be cold from the refrigerator that’s counter to what you see in a lot of recipes where you want everything room temp

But i will explain why old-fashioned rolled oats don’t use the quick cooking kind you want old-fashioned then flour dark brown and white granulated sugars we also use baking soda a lot of kosher salt these are pretty salty cookies vanilla extract and most ingredients we use in a couple different places

So ingredients are humble probably things you already have at home it’s the method that really makes these cookies the first thing you want to do is toast your pecans i’ve already chopped these pecans and like when you chop nuts you often get some of these like little dusty things

That’s fine i actually like having all different sizes so just get those on a small room baking sheet i burn nuts all the time so i always put them in the oven thinking like oh i’ll i’ll remember i’ll know when they’re done and then i forget and then they burn

So just set a timer riddle is like a type of candy so it is a toffee or a caramel that is aerated with baking soda tofu caramel is acidic when you add baking soda it reacts produces gas and you have this kind of bubbly like mixture and then you want to spread

It out before it cools into a slab and you have this delicious crunchy candy so i have baking soda right here i’m going to add baking soda and salt at the end so i’m going to measure those out in advance because i want to have them ready to go as soon

As my caramel is at the right point so i have a half a teaspoon of kosher salt and i’m going to measure a half a teaspoon baking soda granulated sugar and then four tablespoons of unsalted butter just to encourage the sugar to dissolve and to prevent any separating

Of the fat and the sugar i started off with a little bit of water this helps to bind everything together so as if i were making a caramel i’m going to stir it in the beginning just until it comes up to a boil and the stirring action is to encourage that

Sugar to dissolve and now i’m going to switch to swirling so swirling is a way to even out the heat and equalize the temperature throughout without stirring because stirring tends to encourage crystallization and we don’t want a grainy brittle we want a smooth brittle now i’m at a boil i’m going to keep

Cooking this this will cook until that mixture starts to turn golden and then amber and then deep amber and that is our stopping point um i’m going to take a look at the pecans these are on their way but could use another minute or so

Okay so i’m just going to sit here and wait for those and wait for this the pecans are done i feel confident about that so now my brittle mixture is starting to take on a golden color so this is where i’m going to pay attention i have

Medium heat under it all right so i think i’m at that right color that looks like a very dark golden brown so i’m going to kill the heat and now in go my pecans give that a stir so you want the pecans to be well coated once you have everything mixed together

Now is that important step where i’m going to add the baking soda kosher salt that will cause a foaming effect and as soon as i get it well incorporated with some rapid stirring it’ll go onto my little sheet pan and while this mixture is still hot

Try to spread it in a single layer you just want it spread out enough that you could cut it up this is our pecan brittle truly if you only wanted to go this far in the recipe break this up and put it in a bag this makes a phenomenal gift it is delicious

Well i know where to put anything so i’m going to put it on my trash can because that’s sometimes where i need to put things so the brittle has cooled it’s so slightly warm but it’s totally set so you can see we have just this solid

Block before i chop it up i’m just going to break it up into bits just make it easier but seriously for the first time it just made sense why it’s called brutal it’s very brittle i don’t know why that never clicked okay i’m just gonna start chopping

In the recipe i say to cut it up so that the largest pieces are about the size of a pea so you know something like this looks good but irregular is fine some larger pieces are fine some smaller pieces are definitely fine i just love oat cookies i mean i love

Oats in general i just really wanted like a caramelly nutty chewy oat cookie So i have two sticks eight ounces of unsalted butter cut into pieces half of these are gonna go in the bowl of my stand mixer i’m only browning half the butter the rest will go into my saucepan this butter is just melting i have it over like medium high

And browning the butter adds such an amazing like caramelly caramelized flavor to the butter and i love it so much that i have to actively try not to put brown butter in like every recipe because it just makes everything more delicious so when you’re browning butter you want to pay attention

Because those milk solids can burn very easily and you also want to give it near constant agitation and not just agitation but also scraping those milk solids have a tendency to want to stick to the sides and bottom of the pot so by keeping them moving you’re just going to prevent burning

All right so now we’re starting to get some golden colors the darker it gets the more flavor you’ll have i’m going to kill the heat because there’s enough heat left in the pot to continue to toast the butter it smells so good so there’s that really

Fine foam i’m gonna now just pour it into the bowl of the stand mixer on top of the cold butter that’s already in there and the idea is that the cold butter inside will help to drop the temperature of the brown butter and i want that to hang out until the

Butter is room temperature get every last one of those specks into the bowl i mean that’s sorry that sounded really bossy but i just mean you’re going to want to do that because that’s all the flavor i have a love-hate relationship with my food processor i love

What quick work it makes out of like doing basically anything but i hate cleaning it but in this case i absolutely need it because i need to grind my flour mixture so i have all-purpose flour right here this recipe has a relatively low proportion of flour and that’s

Because i’m using oats which absorb a lot of moisture so i don’t need as much flour two teaspoons of kosher salt and one teaspoon of baking soda to this i’m adding half of my oats i have two cups of old-fashioned rolled oats so one cup into the food processor and

Basically i’m like making oat flour i’m grinding these oats into the flour and finally half of my pecan brittle the remaining half and the remaining oats these get mixed into the dough at the end so i just want to go until it’s very fine everything’s broken down

Everything is pretty fine no no big pieces if you had a blender i think you could do this in your blender by the way so you don’t have to have a food processor although i didn’t try it so let me know how it turns out if you do

Go that route here is the butter you don’t even need to be this solid just as long as it’s not hot i actually want the eggs to help set the butter so that the cookie dough is firmer so i have two cold eggs i’m going to start by adding my sugars i have

Granulated and this is dark brown with cookies it’s always great to have a mix of granulated and brown sugars because the granulated sugar will give you that crispy edge and the brown sugar will keep that center chewy again i’m not creaming it really i don’t

Want light and fluffy i just want it to be well mixed and smooth and kind of satiny all right so now i’m going to add my eggs one at a time i want these to emulsify in and also they will chill that butter and thicken it a bit oh i

Forgot i almost forgot all right i almost forgot about the vanilla the presence of vanilla extract is so important it is that mixture of vanilla butter and brown sugar that gives that butterscotchy flavor that i really want and craving cookies so i use a full tablespoon of vanilla extract

Okay now it’s time to add the dry ingredients you don’t have to sift this it’ll be a little lumpy but that’s fine it’s going to kind of pulse this in if i were to turn it on it would just blow everywhere all right so i gave that a thorough mix

And now i’m going to mix in the very last ingredients which is the remaining one cup of oats and the remaining chopped up pecan brittle kind of looks like concrete but it tastes really good so now you went through all of that trouble and you cannot bake it right now i

Highly recommend that you chill the dough before you bake it chilling cookie dough and just letting it rest in the fridge does so much for the final cookies it improves the texture it improves the flavor it gives you that lovely wrinkled edge like it will look better

So if you need to eat some of the raw dough and then chill the rest so i portion these into two ounce balls um a scoop is really great i used this scoop to portion the same dough last night which i’ll show you i have it in the fridge

And now in retrospect i don’t think it’s two ounces so i’m gonna measure it a quarter cup of water is two ounces so let’s try it these are not the same are they this is definitely smaller all right so this is i think wow damn it i think it’s only one ounce

Where’s my two ounce scoop basically two ounces is a quarter cup so if you don’t have a two ounce scoop you can use a quarter cup measure which is i guess what i’m going to do because i don’t know where my two ounce scoop is so i like

Scrape you know scoops them up and then scrape against the side of the bowl and then you can kind of level it off and then just go once around and make a little mound and so this recipe makes about 18 large cookies these blobs are not the most visually appealing but they’re gonna

Bake into a beautiful delicious cookie these are gonna go into the fridge i’ll cover it it says like even two hours is fine but eight to 24 hours i think is best and in here i have a tray that i did last night now on this one i used the one ounce scoop

So i’m actually going to mush two of them together into one cookie anything that you don’t need in the moment to bake and into your freezer i cannot emphasize enough how awesome it is to have cookie dough ready to go in your freezer the idea of like a personal warm cookie at night

Is oop let’s just go in the fridge for now i’ll put that in there later all right i love nothing more than my own warm cookie from the oven for dessert you know what i don’t trust necessarily that these are i just want to double check the size

One and a half ounces it’s so annoying what a pain so then i have to do a third of each so each one of these gets a third of another blob mushed onto it sometimes you have to improvise i’m smashing a third of my blob onto my existing blobs

Let’s see two on the nose so these are obviously quite large cookies i like to give them plenty of room on the baking sheet so you i think you can safely fit eight of these so here i have my eight two ounce portions of dough that’s nine okay here i have eight

These are going to go in and because they are large cookies they take a little while to bake 16 to 20 minutes oops and the recipe i say to do six pieces on each tray it’ll be fine okay here are my cookies i would defer to myself in the actual

Recipe which is it’s better to put six instead of eight but actually they look really good i just love how wrinkly these cookies get and like seeing that really dark golden brown edge and then the pale or center i just know they’re going to be crispy chewy and then soft in the center

I’m very excited but these have to cool because they are so thin and soft let them cool for a while on the baking sheet before you try to transfer them to a rack so when you take them out you might see that the center looks a little bit shiny still and

That’s fine like i do like to under bake cookies in the center slightly and then they set as they cool here are my still warm but ready to eat oh and pecan cookies i’m gonna taste this one i’m really glad that i toasted those pecans really well

Because it’s such a nice balance to all of the kind of butterscotchy flavors going on this cookie is insane and it totally justifies the also insane amount of work that goes into them but like i really don’t think i’ve ever had a better cookie these are great for the holidays let me

Know how they turn off for you leave a message in the comments section make it be like a community thing can i show you which one i like for the beauty okay i think i like this one look how pretty it is how do i pin him rick are you there hi

How are you look who it is when i think of cookies i think of rick and it was like it didn’t matter what was going on or like what recipes you were working on you’re just like always making cookies and particularly you’re really known for the heath bar

Chocolate chip cookie which is like one of the most phenomenal chocolate chip cookies ever i wanted to show you these because i feel like this is a very rick kind of cookie i really want that right now so this is an oat pecan brittle cookie and it’s a rick cookie for a couple

Reasons one it’s just like super delicious but two i feel like the method would really speak to you and there’s brown butter in it um but it’s so good so i have so much cookie dough frozen from these so i’m gonna try to i’m gonna try to mail them to you

And see how it works so i wanted to tell you about this one and then to talk about cookies and like what are you gonna be baking for the holidays and like are you gonna bake for the holidays tell me your plan um yes definitely gonna make for the

Holidays um you know it’s sad because actually cookies aren’t as big a thing here as i would wish they would they were um so i just that just means i have to bake all my own so that’s fine the things that i really like here that have been incorporating more into

My cookies are the pilocio which is mexican brown sugar but it has a very distinctive caramelly smoky molasses flavor but also coconut because like this area like grows a lot of coconut so the coconut here is incredible even the dried coconut is just like phenomenal yeah so anytime i can stick

Coconut in something i’m like i’m there for it well i miss you i wish we could bake together but sometime soon i’ll talk to you soon let me know when you get the cookies okay bye all right miss you bye hey everyone i’m claire i want to thank

You for watching me make recipes from my new cookbook dessert person and i wanted to take a moment to highlight the work of another penguin random house author this book is called time to eat by nadia hussein i was first introduced to nadia like many of you because she is the winner of

The great british bake off and she also has her own netflix series and this book is all about super smart very delicious quick weeknight recipes nadia has a family she knows sort of how busy people are and this book has solutions for you she also has a baking book coming out in

2021 so stay tuned for that check this one out