Oatmeal Scotchies

Because I'm trying very hard to eat healthily--especially while working from home--I haven't been baking much.  After all, I normally taste the things I make, but bring the rest to work for others to enjoy.  And if the workforce in my house totals just me...there's no reason to make lots of treats.  However, I've been missing baking, and since baking is a nice stress reliever, I've also been missing the good vibes I get from making things.  (Baking as a creative outlet, y'all.  It's a real thing, I promise you!)

So I decided to make some cookies.  And then see if I could freeze the dough to bake up later.  I wanted to go with something that wouldn't use a ton of flour or sugar and that was a tried and true sort of thing.  So, I went with Oatmeal Scotchies--the classic oatmeal cookie with butterscotch chips baked in.  And I used the the recipe from the back of the bag of Nestle butterscotch morsels.  I added more cinnamon and dark brown sugar, but other than that it is straight-up the classic. 

Side note: I trust the Nestle morsels folks.  When I was a kid, my mom's chocolate chip cookies were always from the recipe on the bag, and so are mine.  That is a DANG GOOD recipe!

The experiment with freezing the dough worked pretty great, actually.  Just need to either let it come to room temp, or bake straight from the freezer and just give them a few extra minutes in the oven. And, actually, the frozen-to-oven cookies have come out...fluffier, I guess.  I'm not gonna lie, I actually like the freezer ones better than the ones that were baked on the first day, and I can bake just 1 or 2...or 3 if the day has been particularly bad.  (The photos on this post are all from the first batch, btw.  I baked them a bit on the longer side, so they were flatter and a bit crispier than they might have otherwise have been.)

Ingredients:

• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. ground cinnamon (the original recipe called for 1/2 tsp.)
• 2 sticks butter or margarine, softened (I used Blue Bonnet Margarine)
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup packed brown sugar (I used dark brown sugar, because I had some that was already open)
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 3 cups oats (I used old fashioned Quaker oats, but you could use quick oats instead)
• 1 package butterscotch chips (1 2/3 cups or 11 oz.)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees 
2. Whisk together flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon in a small bowl
3. Cream together butter and sugars
4. Beat in eggs and vanilla
5. Beat in flour mixture, gradually
6. Add oats and chips and stir together
7. Drop by rounded tablespoon-fulls onto ungreased cookie sheet
8. Bake for 7 to 10 minutes (less for chewy cookies, more for crispier cookies. 
9. Cool on baking sheets for a few minutes, then remove to cool completely

To freeze for baking later:

1. Scoop dough out into balls onto a cookie sheet and freeze until fairly solid
2. Pack in a large freezer bag
3. To bake, bring desired number of dough-balls to room temp and bake for regular time/temp or bake straight from the freezer for a few extra minutes.  

Makes about 4 dozen cookies