Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies

This is what I think of when I think of oatmeal cookies, no matter whether they are adorned with raisins, chocolate chips or coconut: oats, cinnamon, flour and eggs:

But this particular chocolate oatmeal recipe is built more like a brownie recipe - melted chocolate and butter, to which the other ingredients are added:

The shiny chocolate mixture getting the final crucial ingredient:

and ready to bake on parchment!

"Very Best" Oatmeal Bread

I keep returning to this recipe for oatmeal bread. You start, basically, by making oatmeal:

While the oatmeal cools, you can gather the rest of the ingredients. The dough always mixes up easily, even when I add some whole wheat flour:

A smoothly kneaded ball, ready to rise:

And ready to bake! Predictably, I didn't manage to get a good sandwich shot of this bread for you...next time.

Peanut Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Once in a while I like to pretend that cookies can be good for me. In reality, this means "less bad." Here, I've mixed peanut butter into my creamed butter and sugar for a hit of protein in an old classic:

A lot of peanut butter:

That wasn't quite enough, so oats, too, went into these cookies:

The cookies, pre-baking:

After, they had a little bit of a healthy look with the oatmeal texture, but it was entirely erased by the delicious taste (and the chocolate).