National Homemade Cookie Day 2014

In honor of "National Homemade Cookie Day" (October 1st) and to do a feature on this OXO Good Cookie Spatula I received from one of the Holiday cookie swaps I've done in the past, I thought I'd do a rare recipe post at the same time.  I got the spatula by taking part in a cookie swap in 2012 (my second time with that event).  Mine as you can see in this photo has an orange handle and head as well as the words "be a good cookie" on the head.

I had a cake mix and decided to try a recipe from it but the one on the box had nuts in it.  I love nuts but it isn't fair for me to make something that my entire family can't enjoy or at least try (my husband has a serious tree nut allergy).  Today I want to share how I modified that recipe into my own and review how well the spatula worked.

I used two types of chocolate in this recipe; the cake mix and a bag of peanut butter and milk chocolate chips.  You may want to change this recipe yourself but I tend to use egg substitutes and reduced fat oils and butter.

Double Chocolate Oatmeal Peanut Butter Cookies (44 average cookie scoop cookies)

Ingredients:

1 pk Duncan Hines Dark Chocolate Fudge cake mix
¼ cup water
1 stick "I cant’ believe its not butter" (melted)
½ cup egg substitute
¼ cup light brown sugar
1 tsp real vanilla
1 cup old fashioned oats
11oz peanut butter and milk chocolate baking chips

Instructions:

     Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and grease your cookies sheets.  Blend together the water, melted butter, egg substitute, and vanilla.  Add in the sugar and oats thoroughly then incorporate the cake mix a bit at a time until it is all blended well. Finally add in the baking chips and get them into every layer of your batter.

     Using an average size cookie scoop place the dough on your greased cookie sheets.  Bake for 13 minutes (1 minute less for more googy or 1 minute more for more crisp cookies).

     Remove the cookie sheet and cookies from oven but let the cookies set for two minutes before you start removing them to either a cooling rack or onto a piece of parchment paper or other surface.  I use paper shopping bags cut and laid out myself then I recycle the bag after I'm done.

The spatula did a very good job of removing each cookie carefully and simply.  Since I do not heavily grease my cookie sheets (why add more fats?) this is very important for my baking.  Lter tests with the same spatula showed that it works best on light cookies or products but not so much on harder/firmer cookies.  If you follow the recipe using the same ingredients that I did, each cookie has 109 calories and that's all.

So, Sisters and Brothers, what do you think of these? Would you make them and if so, for what occasion?