Oatmeal Cookies

Ingredients

• 1 egg
• ¼ cup sugar
• ¼ cup thin cream
• ¼ cup milk
• ½ cup fine oatmeal
• 2 cups flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt

Method

Whisk the egg until it reaches the ribbon stage — the mass should fall in a thick, continuous stream when you lift the whisk, and take several seconds to disappear back into the bowl. This incorporates air that baking powder will expand during cooking, giving these biscuits their tender crumb. Add the caster sugar, then the thin cream and milk in one go, whisking just until combined. Overworking at this point develops gluten, which makes the biscuits tough rather than crisp.

Combine the oatmeal, flour, baking powder, and salt in a separate bowl, then sift the mixture into the wet ingredients. Sift twice if you have time — the mechanical action breaks up any lumps in the cookies and distributes the baking powder evenly. Fold the two together with a spatula using deliberate, broad strokes until you see no dry flour. The dough will be slack and slightly sticky, nothing like a biscuit dough you might be used to. This is correct; the liquid-to-dry ratio is high because oats absorb moisture during baking, and cream and milk are there to tenderise the crumb.

Dust your work surface generously with flour and turn the dough out. Roll it between two sheets of baking parchment to an even thickness — roughly 3 millimetres — rather than spreading it free-form, which causes uneven thickness and patchy browning. Cut your shapes and transfer them to a buttered baking sheet, spacing them 2 centimetres apart. Oats contain lipids that can make biscuits spread; tighter spacing prevents them joining during bake.

Bake at 180°C for 10–12 minutes, until the edges are golden brown but the centres still give slightly when pressed. They will continue to set as they cool on the tray for five minutes before transferring to a wire rack. This carryover baking matters: pull them at true doneness and they'll be brittle; leave them in the oven until they feel set, and they'll harden further and become unpleasantly hard.