Park Cafe and cryogenic cookies
Published by Becky S October 4th, 2004 in travels, food
Glacier National Park ain’t exactly a culinary mecca, especially for vegetarians. The only salvation is the Park Cafe, a homey restaurant with a motto you’ve gotta love: pie for strength. In addition to the extensive, homemade pie selection, the Park Cafe serves up some kick-ass Oatmeal Chipper cookies.
I have high standards and won’t waste time on a bad cookie. If it’s burned on the bottom, too flat, or too crunchy, forget it. Oatmeal Chippers were the perfect cookie for the trail—dense, nutty, chocolaty, and chewy. Even better, the cafe staff happily shared the recipe. And then they charged us $250 and wouldn’t give us a refund, so to get revenge I am posting the recipe on the internet.
Ok, not really. The recipe was free, but it was definitely written for a restaurant. Six pounds of flour and 24 eggs? Luckily, some kind soul had converted the ingredient list to quantities for a single batch:
- 1 cup flour
- 3/4 cup oatmeal
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 2 tablespoons salt
- 2 tablespoons cinnamon
- 2 tablespoons nutmeg
- 4 eggs
- 1 pound butter
- 1.5 cups canola oil
Uh, yeah. So desperate was I for the Oatmeal Chippers that I modified this crazy recipe and made a batch. The fatal error? I put in the entire 2 tablespoons of salt.
Some pessimists are saying that extra salt cannot be removed from cookie dough. The woman downstairs, a professional baker, says it’s a hopeless case. Sassy J concurs. I, however, have faith in technology and am keeping the dough in my freezer pending a salt-removing culinary breakthrough.
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That place was a godsend after a long backpacking trip. As for the salt, can’t you add more of the “other stuff” to balance it out?
Yeah, I’m still struggling with a cost benefit analysis on salvaging the dough by adding more of “everything else.”
I’m wary of wasting even more perfectly good cookie ingredients on such a shady recipe. Perhaps it’s best just to go back to Montana and stock up on the Chippers.
wow. a pound of butter? whew. i can imagine what my stomach would look like after that.
Becky,
What are the original proportions? I think I can help you revise the non-colossal size recipe. Also, I make kick-ass oatmeal cookies–have you ever had one of mine? I think you may want to scratch their recipe altogether, and I’ll dig up mine–which has nutmeg and cinnamon in it (also optional walnuts/raisins/chocolate chips). And as I said before–the only salvaging of the salt it to add 4X the ingredients (if you added 4X the salt). You could bring to a homeless shelter.
Bake those suckers as is. Salty oatmeal cookies are yummy. Seriously.
Can’t type.. mouth watering.. yummy cookie thoughts..
You know after a good, sweaty, five-mile run, there’s nothing quite like salty oatmeal cookies, ‘cept maybe a piping hot cup of clam chowder to wash it all down.
It Does A Body Good!
Sassy J, I do not know the original proportions, as I threw away the recipe in disgust.
Theresa, you are weird. However, you’ve won the secret Good Grief! prize of the week, which happens to be big hunk of frozen, salty oatmeal cookie dough. Shipping not included.