I love baking Christmas cookies but find myself sticking to a tried-and-true repertoire.  (Not that my kids are complaining about being forced to eat Kris Kringles, Candy Cane Shortbread, and good ol' Chocolate Chip Cookies year after year.  Those little champs really know how to take one for the team...)

Nevertheless, the ChickAdvisor team took it upon themselves to raise the bar and dig out some new cookie recipes to share this year.  This is a story about my found-on-the-internet #recipefail that I rescued with chocolate (which I think we can all agree was the right thing to do).  Said internet recipe had reduced-sugar tweaks which I eagerly incorporated, but for the regular version scroll to the bottom for recipe alternatives.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup butter
2 Tbsp molasses
1 cup Splenda (or generic equivalent)
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups white flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
2 cups rolled oats (optional: grind into oat flour)
1/2 tsp cinnamon (because I add cinnamon to everything, even when it seems like an iffy idea)
1 cup unsweetened flaked coconut
1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips, baker's chocolate, or chocolate bar
1 Tbsp heavy cream or butter (give or take)

Yield: 2-3 dozen


Cream together the fats and sugars.  Add eggs and vanilla.  Mix until thoroughly blended; the mixture will have a pudding-like consistency.


Combine flour, baking powder and soda, rolled oats, and cinnamon in a separate bowl.  I ground my oats using my blender to a medium-coarse texture: this was an attempt to sneak fiber into the recipe without my kids cottoning on.  If you leave yours whole, the cookie will have a more variable texture and probably a little more spread when baked.  Add coconut last and mix.

Combine the wet and dry ingredients and form into a dough.  Mine became a stiff, playdoh-like consistency.  This is where I realized something was fishy, but y'know - when it doubt, keep going...

Raw (l)... baked (r)

Roll small meatball-sized dough balls between your hands and place on a lightly greased cookie sheet.

Bake at 350F (180C) for 10 minutes.  Do not overbake or your cookies will become rock hard!  You will know they are done by the timer dinging, as the finished product looks exactly the same as the raw product (see evidence of this in my picture).  Allow to cool while you prepare your chocolate glaze.


Pour chocolate chips into a small saucepan and add cream or butter.  Don't follow a random chocolate fondue recipe you find on the internet like I did - the proportions are way off.  In other words, do what I say not what I demonstrate in these pictures.

Heat on medium-low, stirring with a wisk until the chocolate fully melts.


Dip the coconut oat balls into the chocolate and set aside on a foil, parchment, or wax-lined container to cool.  Because I used too much cream at first (as seen in this picture), my chocolate didn't really solidify and turned out more like an icing.  I later tried the glaze with less cream and it hardened up nicely.


Et voila - your coconut oat balls, though looking nothing like the internet recipe promised, taste delicious and are the perfect size to pop into a gifting tin!

Recipe Tweak Tips:

*instead of 1/2 cup each shortening and butter, go with 1 cup of shortening to reduce calories.  The butter makes the taste a little richer but it works well both ways.

*substitute 1 cup of packed brown sugar for molasses - this will probably also help make your finished product more cookie-like and less ball-like.

*substitute 1 cup of white sugar for Splenda

*try a wet flaked coconut product (fresh or from the tin) - I used dry flakes and I think this is another reason my dough turned out drier.

So if you've been following my baking (mis)adventures, you'll realize that #recipefail happens to me quite often (salvaging recipes is my new shtick now).  Please tell me I'm not alone?