Waiter, there is pepper in my cookie!

So, my cookie post the other day was all about oatmeal, chocolate and pomegranates. Since this is a good basic cookie recipe, I decided to make oatmeal cranberry cookies. The recipe itself suggests other modifications like raisins or Pretzel pieces. My original plan was to add a little bit of sea salt on them. I was going back and forth if I should add some dark chocolate. Or with hazelnuts in them. And perhaps a bit of espresso? Oh the possibilities… And there are also so many other great oatmeal cookie recipes – including oatmeal raisin cookies by Smitten Kitchen. Mmm.

Stacked!

Oh look, I actually set up a mise en place!

This time around, I decided to make Oatmeal Cranberry cookies. After all, that’s a great combination in your cereal or in porridge. I followed all the steps of the original recipe, substituting one cup of dried cranberries for the one cup of pomegranate. And then, then I got creative. I decided to add pepper to my cookies. Many people add flakes of salt on their cookie, so why not pepper? And the Pfeffernüsse cookies contain pepper (as well as other spices) anyway. I added freshly ground pepper, and tasted the dough regularly to see if I could taste a bit of the pepper.

But I just didn’t get the slight spicy taste, so I added more pepper. Which was a mistake. Because now the cookies had a bit of afterburn. You didn’t taste it so much in the cookie dough, but more in the finished cookies. Oops. I was fine with the cookies – but for a Western palate it was too peppery. Or at least for people who aren’t that adventurous, taste-wise. And that, that was the problem. You see, the cookies were supposed to be my little gift for meeting a bunch of friends. I don’t think they eat much spicy food, so I figured that all those cookies would just have to stay with me. (Yum!)

pepper in action

Fortunately I had more brown sugar and enough oats. So, I made another batch of cookies, this time dark chocolate oatmeal walnut cookies. One the one hand, I was very sad that I was going to give away most these delicious cookies – but at the same time I was rather relieved – I already had another batch of cookies I was going to enjoy.

chocolate oatmeal walnut cookies – fresh from the oven, and in little gift bags

The lesson? Be careful when using spices in dessert-esque food, including cookies. I will be making the peppery oatmeal & cranberry cookies again, but this time I’ll use less pepper. Dark chocolate & oatmeal & walnuts are a great combination. And cookies crumbled into yoghurt are awesome!

pepper cookies & yoghurt