I've long wanted to make a granola variety chocolate chip cookies using H-E-B Select Ingredients Triple Chocolate Granola. That cereal is yummy, and cookies sound like a handy way to skip the bowl of milk. Not a milk-and-cookies type myself, maybe others might take a shine to the idea. Poking around the web, one prospective recipe was "Granola Cereal Cookies".
The list of ingredients looked reasonably short and simple. Some comments looked like good suggestions for deviation, such as using granulated sugar instead of brown sugar, and oil instead of butter. I'm more partial to granulated sugar; easy to pour. As for oil for fat, butter is twice to triple the cost of oil for similar quantity. (Butter seems to be the most common fat for cooky recipes.)
I further deviated by reducing the sugar. I figure the cereal already has plenty of it. As the cereal is already a finished product, I also skipped the vanilla and additional chocolate chips. The video is a slide show for baking these chocolatey chippy granola cookies. The process is intended for those who have cooky preparation experience. You should know about recipe utensils and equipment, ingredients, recipe steps, and reading between lines. Note: The cookies are doable using a pastry blender, but a tilt-head mixer cuts down on elbow grease.
Dough Dispensing
I used a 1 1/2T cooky scoop. The first panful took 7 minutes, the subsequent cookies much longer. A few dollops tended to fall apart upon dispensing--not enough dough to act as "glue". Or too much cereal for dough amount. Adjustment for future batches would be to lessen the amount of cereal by maybe 3/4 C.
Baking and Results
The yield was 39 cookies. They were tasty, but crunchier than I preferred. Also, small pieces tended to crumble off upon chompdown. A main reason for crunchiness is baking at higher temperature and longer than necessary. Cookies continue to bake with residual heat from the goodies and also the pan. I baked at 375 for 11 minutes each batch. Google search results for "why are my cookies hard when they cool" provide insight. I'm leaning more towards temperature and time being the reasons for my outcome. Adjustment for future batches would be to set the oven for 350, and bake between 9 1/2 to 10 minutes.
Calories and Sodium
I was mildly surprised to see the cookies calculated for 139 calories each. I chalk that high number to the granola cereal already loaded with calories. Also, dispensing might have been easier if I had more dough base or less cereal. Maybe I could have squeezed out a few more cookies for the session for the same total calories.
I've made numerous batches of cookies over years. Want to see more?
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