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Happy National Chocolate Chip Cookie day! But really who needs an excuse to make chocolate chip cookies? This post began about a month ago as I set out to make a chocolate chip cookie that was not super sweet, decently healthy, used my extra sourdough starter, and kept its shape pretty well. In other words, the perfect hiking and biking snack!

The previous batches of cookies I had not photographed the process, just the end product. Rookie blogger mistake? This put me in a position last night where I was making a batch last minute to photograph for the blog. I thought, coming into last night, that I had the recipe down. The last batch had been a little sour, a little sweet, crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside, and I was super happy….but then…queue sad wah-wah music. What happened?!?!?!

A picture is worth a thousand words…I think we can all see the problem here. The question is why? I made a second batch last night/this morning with no change in the ingredients to help figure out the answer even better. These cookies have taught me two big things:

Do not allow your fat component to get too warm and don’t over cream.

The temperature difference in the kitchen making the different batches wasn’t the problem. I believe my mistake was:

1. Sitting the butter out on the counter too long and;
2. Beating the butter/coconut oil and creaming the butter/coconut oil with the sugar too long (the cats were picking on each other, I had to intervene…and left the mixer on for 5 minutes ish…whoops).

Lessons learned: Leave the butter out until it is just warm enough to beat and beat it with the oil and the sugar just long enough for it to hold its shape and be slightly yellow (King Arthur suggests 2-3 minutes), no more! Beating adds heat and just sitting out adds heat…quicker is better for these cookies. I knew over creaming could be bad, but I didn’t realize it could be this bad.

If you have the time, and are planning ahead (Which is not how I work. I normally make cookies when I am like OMG WANT COOKIES NOW), another partial remedy for this issue is to put the cookie dough in the fridge. This won’t completely save them if you over beat the butter and sugar; the texture might not be what you want. But, it will allow you to bake them and not have them run all over the place like mine did though. I put the cookies I made this morning in the fridge over night and they held their shape very well (maybe even too well…if you do this I would suggest making the cookies almost the exact shape and size you want them to be. They won’t expand or flatten much). You can see the “problem” cookies before going in the oven on the left (looking at them I don’t how I thought they would turn out ok) and the fridge cookies on the right. Hard to believe they have the exact some ingredients!

Don’t worry I won’t throw the “disasters” away. They are still pretty delicious, though I can’t taste any sour in them. I froze some of them and have big plans in the future (thinking something to do with ice cream)!

 Sourdough Chocolate Chip Cookies

Modified from Bev’s Chocolate Chip Cookies on EatingWell.com
Makes 2 dozen smaller sized cookies.

¼ cup butter
¼ cup coconut oil (cold)
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar (packed)
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup whole wheat flour
½ cup rolled oats (ground)
¼ cup rolled oats (whole)
½ cup fed sourdough starter
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup chocolate chunks (chips work fine, I just love chunks!)

1. Preheat oven to 350° F (365 if you live at altitude like me). Coat two cookie sheets with oil, parchment paper, or Silpat.
2. Grind oats in a blender or food processor until they are your desired consistency*.
3. Transfer to medium bowl and combine with flour, whole oats, and sourdough starter.**Set aside for ??? minutes (see *** note below).
4. Beat butter and coconut oil at medium speed until combined and smooth. Add in granulated sugar and brown sugar, beat again on medium speed until creamy and smooth then add in egg and vanilla extract and beat on low until just incorporated.
5. Add salt and baking soda to flour mixture. Stir then add to mixer. Beat at low speed until just combined.
6. Stir in chocolate chips.

~ You have a couple options here. Option 1: make cookies immediately. Depending on how cold you kept your butter they can turn out fine. The first batch I made that turned out great I cooked right away. Option 2: Refrigerate the dough. I did this for the second batch of cookies pictured here. They did not expand out when cooking almost at all so make them the size you want them to be on the baking sheet. Refrigeration time is us to you. You can do as short as 30 minutes or as long as days. King Arthur has a GREAT write up about this. They have convinced me that if I plan to make cookies at anytime I should always have some dough in the fridge~

7. Place a heaping tablespoon of dough, at least 1 inch apart, onto the coated baking sheets.¹I love my silicone mat with the cookie spaces as you can see in the picture above. This was a gift and I could not find the exact one online but Silpat makes a similar one Bake cookies about 15 minutes total, half way through rotating the location of the baking sheets.²I know a lot of recipes say cook 1 sheet at a time. You can do this, but for this recipe refrigerate the dough between sheets then. Also make sure the sheets are cooled down before putting the dough on them. This will keep them from spreading too much. I do two sheets at a time but half way through I flip their locations in the oven. I do this because I don’t want the spreading issue, I want these cute and compact cookies. I have never had an issue with this but bake them how you want to bake them!Bake cookies until slightly darker on the bottom and the edges.
8. Remove from oven and allow to cool 5 minutes on baking sheets, then transfer to wire rack to cool completely (or not because who doesn’t love warm cookies?!?!?!).

Notes:
* Use any combination of ground and whole oats. I like a few whole oats for texture but the ground is what really do the work here giving the cookie its shape and texture. The more you grind them the less you will even realize there are oats in there. Below is about how much I grind them.

** For those familiar with baking with starter, this mixture will seem VERY dry to you. This is ok. Remember the only liquid is coming from the starter itself.

*** If you want a sourer cookie, set the flour mixture aside for at least 30 minutes before adding it to the butter/sugar. This will allow the sourdough to work with the flour. I did this with the first experiment and they were pretty sour. If you do it after you risk my mistake. The oils will warm up as they sit on the counter.

Addition: After working on my Faux Sourdough Cookie Recipe and doing additional reading on this I realized that I should probably have let the flour, starter, and oats sit overnight for the best breakdown of the gluten in the flour. I plan to do this again and see how sour they actually get. Should you want the real benefit of the sourdough starter I recommend you do this though it makes these cookies almost a 24 hour (minimum) process.

Of course I have to include a picture of the cookies serving their purpose and being perfect for hiking snacks!

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