Adventures In Ragamuffin Cuisine
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Chocolate and peanut butter. The perfect pairing. Is there any way to improve on this delight? I would say yes…add some oatmeal. Then you’ve gone past perfect and into sublime.
When I was a kid (pre-teen, I think), my mother came into a fabulous cookie recipe. The origin of the recipe is now lost to time (my mother being unaware that she should be taking notes so that she could give me this information decades later), but they were called Monster Cookies. I’m not sure why that name, but we did end up eating them around Halloween every year. And also any other time we could persuade my mother to make them. These days, my favorite sister-in-law likes to bake them for Christmas. This year, she got her sons to help. Helpers get to lick the bowl. (Yes, I know that the killjoy FDA says we aren’t supposed to eat raw cookie dough; no angry letters, please.)
For a couple years, when I was a teen, my mother and I both participated in a local craft fair. She made peanut butter balls (which sold out as fast as she could make them) and I made Monster Cookies (which also sold out, if not quite as fast). After I became too busy to bake for the craft fair, my brother took a stab at it. He was selling the cookies for 50 cents apiece, so when he sold 100 of them, he came away with $50 cash in his hand. He was utterly thrilled until my mother pointed out that he couldn’t rightfully call that profit, since he had yet to subtract the expenses. The M&Ms, the chocolate chips, the peanut butter…the poor lad’s face fell as his $50 dwindled away to cover the cost of ingredients. After that crushing disappointment, my brother never returned to the world of free market enterprise.
When I was in college, my parents were running a deli called Ragamuffins, and of course, Monster Cookies were on the menu. But we decided to class up the nomenclature just a smidge, and so we called them Ragamuffin Cookies. Our signature cookie. The deli has long since passed out of the family (and then out of existence) but the new name remains. Ragamuffin Cookies are here to stay.
So, the method, followed by the recipe. You will need a stand mixer for this. I suppose a particularly muscular person might mix by hand, but I personally broke more than one wooden spoon trying, before I caved and invested in the KitchenAid mixer I have now. And even my heavy duty stand mixer gets a workout with this thick dough. You will cream together your butter and peanut butter with the sugars. Then beat in the eggs one at a time, then add the vanilla and the baking soda. After that, beat in your rolled oats; this is where the mixer really starts to work hard. Once that’s all combined, you’ll want to add the final ingredients, the chocolate chips and the M&Ms. The recipe says to hand-mix in those last two ingredients. Yes, this is where I have broken a few wooden spoons. If you use the mixer, you will likely crush the candies into the dough, rather than having them float intact. I admit, I do cheat slightly. I very briefly run the mixer at the lowest speed. You’ll hear a few candies crunch against the side of the bowl, but the majority will be intact and mostly mixed in. Giving yourself this head start does make things much easier. Maybe I ought to try the dough hook for this part next time…
I use my quarter-cup cookie scoop for this, because traditionally, Ragamuffin Cookies are big cookies. Scoop just a few cookies onto an ungreased baking sheet—you will need to leave a lot of room for these to spread out. You can cook them this way, but I prefer to make a little hollow in the center. This makes for a cookie that bakes a little more evenly. I also place a few M&Ms on the top of each cookie, just to be fancy. Then bake them for 8-12 minutes. You’ll need to let them cool on the cookie sheet for 3-5 minutes before they firm up enough to lift onto a rack to continue cooling. These are amazing warm. Fabulous cold. Delicious three days after baking. And boy, do they make for a popular gift. One more note: since these cookies have no flour, they are technically gluten-free. But if you’re going to serve them to a person who cannot eat any gluten, don’t forget to use the special gluten-free rolled oats.
The difference between cookies that were slightly flattened and those that were not.
Our family loves these at any time of the year. And I confess, I didn’t hate making more than one batch for pictures for this blog post. I hope you give them a try…I’m pretty sure you’ll love them too.
Ragamuffin Cookies
Click here for printable PDF of recipe
INGREDIENTS
12 oz peanut butter
1 stick (1/2 a cup) butter, softened
1 lb brown sugar
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
3 eggs
2 tsp baking soda
4 1/2 cups rolled oats
6 oz M&Ms
6 oz Semisweet Chocolate or Dark Chocolate chips
DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 350°.
In a mixer, cream together the peanut butter and butter. Then cream in the sugar and brown sugar. Beat in the eggs, vanilla, and baking soda. Mix in the oatmeal, and then mix in the chocolate chips and M&Ms by hand.
Make into balls and flatten the balls slightly. Decorate the tops with a few M&Ms.
Bake on ungreased cookie sheet for 10-12 minutes and cool on a wire rack.
Note: the number of cookies depends on the size you make them. Using a 1/4 cup sized cookie scoop, I get 32 cookies. Also, the unbaked balls of dough freeze very well. Thaw completely before baking.
