Kitchen Sink Cookies

Crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside and delicious through and through. Warm up your kitchen with a batch. Bonus: this recipe uses up your extraneous ingredients.

My notes on the recipe in italics.

Martha Stewart’s Kitchen Sink Cookies

From marthastewart.com, and published in “Martha Stewart’s Cookie Perfection” (Clarkson Potter).

Yield: Makes 8 cookies (or more, depending on the size of your cookies)

Ingredients:

2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, room temperature
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar (I prefer dark brown sugar)
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour  (1 cup unbleached and 1 cup whole wheat flour works, too)
1 teaspoon coarse salt (sub regular or fine, coarse feels like biting into rocks)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
1 cup large unsweetened coconut flakes
1 cup dried apricots, coarsely chopped
6 ounces semi-sweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
1 cup dried cherries
1 cup pecans, toasted 

Instructions:

1.   Preheat oven to 350°F. In a large bowl, with an electric mixer on medium, beat butter and both sugars until pale and fluffy, about 2 minutes. With mixer on low, beat in eggs, one at a time, until combined. Beat in vanilla.
2.   In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder. With mixer on low, gradually add to butter mixture, beating until well combined. Add oats, coconut, apricots, chocolate, cherries, and pecans, and mix with a wooden spoon until just combined.
3.   Scoop dough into 8 balls (3/4 cup each). (The exceptionally large cookie may make a dramatic statement on the plate but are unwieldy to eat. I prefer a smaller cookie -2 or 3 bites- made with a teaspoon. The dough also freezes well. I bake a dozen or so then freeze the rest in 2 to 4 containers.  It is delightful to thaw the dough and bake cookies whenever I want.)

  Transfer to parchment-lined baking sheets, spacing about 3 inches apart. Use the palm of your hand to flatten into 4-inch rounds. Bake cookies, rotating sheets halfway through, until golden brown, about 16 minutes. (Ovens vary,  12 minutes total baking time worked for me) Let cookies cool on sheet 2 minutes before transferring to wire racks to cool completely. (Cookies can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature up to 3 days.)

Tip:

Feel free to customize the add-ins: If you don’t like pecans, use walnuts; try cranberries instead of cherries. I used white chocolate chips instead of cherries. Just make sure there’s enough space between the cookies, as they spread in the oven.