Tasty Tuesday - parmesan oatmeal cookies

The holiday season always seems to be full of cookies.  And don't get me wrong, I love cookies!  But sometimes, all the sweet treats get a little overwhelming.  That's why I looked for a savory treat to take to my in-law's home for Thanksgiving.  And these savory cookies from the kitchn were perfect. The recipe was pretty easy and I didn't alter a thing.

The recipe resulted in 21 cookies for us.

1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
1/4 cup warm water
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/4 cup lightly packed light brown sugar
1 large egg, beaten
1 cup sifted unbleached all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons chopped fresh rosemary
1/4 teaspoon freshly-cracked black pepper
1 cup freshly-grated Parmesan cheese

Preheat the oven to 350° F and put parchment paper on a cookie sheet. 

Place the oats in a large mixing bowl and pour the water over them.

In a small bowl, mix the olive oil, brown sugar, and egg. Pour this mixture over the oats, stir to combine, and set aside.

In another mixing bowl, combine the flour, sea salt, baking soda, rosemary, and black pepper. Whisk to combine well. Stir in the Parmesan.

Gradually sprinkle the flour mixture over the oat mixture, stirring until combined. This part took some work for me and it was a bit difficult to mix because it was a thick dough.  I ended up abandoning the spoon and finishing up with my hands,

Form tablespoon-sized scoops of dough and evenly space on the baking sheet. Flatten each piece of dough to about 1/4-inch thick. Sprinkle a pinch of sea salt on top of each.

Bake for 15 to 17 minutes, until the edges are slightly darkened.  It took the full 17 minutes in our oven. The cookies puffed up a bit but didn't really spread.

Sadly, I was so concerned with making sure that these turned out well that I forgot to take any photos of the cookies in progress. But here is a photo of the cookies after we took them out of the oven.

They turned out delicious and I'm sure I'll make these again in the future.  I might increase the pepper and reduce the parmesan, especially if I was going to serve these with cheese as recommended in the original recipe.  If just serving by themselves, I would probably keep this amount of parmesan. I thought these would be kind of like crackers but they weren't crispy and the texture was definitely more like a cookie than a cracker.

Now, I don't think these are necessarily healthy but there are oats, olive oil, and much less sugar than a traditional cookie recipe.  More importantly, it's just a nice change from all the sweets that are around at this time of year.

 I'm linking up with Lean Lena for Tasty Tuesday and will also link up with Deborah and Tina for Meatless Mondays.

Do you have any unusual cookies you've made or eaten?  Another favorite of mine is a white chocolate chip root beer cookie recipe that I got from the Washington Post but that one is definitely sweet!