A Winning Moment - Oats Cookies

Competitions always help me boost my spirit and the winning moments challenge me to keep the spirit going on. :)

Yesterday was one such occasion that made me feel good about what I am doing :)

The popular brand Saffola had challenged a contest on cooking with Oats.

After rambling for a long time with mom and few friends of mine, I decided to go for "Oats cookies" as my entry to the contest. :)

The contest comprised of a quick quiz on oats as the first round, slogan writing contest as the second, a 10 min vegetable carving contest as third which was followed by the display of our prepared oats dish.

“The real contest is always between what you've done and what you're capable of doing. You measure yourself against yourself and nobody else.” - Geoffrey Gaberino

True to the saying, I have always tried only to give my best in what I do and don't expect the results.

Fortunately my hard work paid off and I won the contest under all the categories. :)

Won the first place for vegetable carving and first under the oats sweet category.

And my slogan "Vote is for a healthy nation! Oats is for a healthy human!" won the third place too.

I also bagged the over all title "Miss Saffola Oats Queen 2011" and was crowned by the renowned cooks Mrs. Mallika Badrinath and Chef Damodaran.

I was on cloud 9 and it would remain in my memories as one of the best moments of my life :)

I made this oats cookie house for decoration and this center piece was the special attraction to my entry.

Ingredients:

Oats - 1 cup
Brown sugar - 1/4 cup
All purpose flour - 3 tbl sp
Butter/cooking oil - 1/4 cup
Salt - 1/4 tsp
Chocolate chips
Raisins

Method:

Grind the oats and brown sugar separately into a fine powder.

Beat the butter and sugar in a bowl until it turns smooth and creamy.

Mix the powdered oats, salt and all purpose flour together and gently stir in the flour mixture just until incorporated. Now flatten the dough into a smooth disk shape with your hand and wrap in plastic wrap. Chill the dough for 15 mins.

Preheat the oven to 180°C.

Take out the dough and pinch off equal little bits of dough and roll them into smooth balls. Press them a little flat with your palm. Now dip a fork in flour and press it slightly on the biscuits to get the tine marks on top giving it a decorative look.

Place them on lined baking trays.

Oats has the ability to puff up hence remember to leave enough space between each other when you place them on the tray.

Place the tray with cookies and bake for 15-20 minutes, watching closely so that they don’t get too brown. 18 minutes did is perfectly in my convection oven.

Cool them on the wire rack for a while and enjoy eating :)

This quantity would make 15 medium sized cookies.

Tips:

I made 4 variations of oats cookies for the contest.

* Added chocolate chips and chopped raisins to the dough and made cookies.

* Sandwiched two cookies by applying melted chocolate or chocolate butter cream or nutella and made creamed cookies.

* Salted cookies(White ones in the below picture)

Ingredients:

Oats(powdered) -1 cup
Oats(whole) - 3 tblsp
All purpose flour(maida) - 1/3 cup
Butter - 1/4 cup
Salt - 1 tsp

Follow the same method as above and bake salted cookies :)

Written by: Nithya
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