These cookies aren’t the kind that will win any beauty pagents. No siree bob, these are the kind of cookies that would make the mirror crack as they groomed their warty selves in the morning whilst asking any available reflective surface if they were pretty – in the hopes that one would survive the ensuing crack to respond that they weren’t all that bad.
Ladies and gentlemen, these are the cookies that, once they had been removed from the oven and viewed by my mother, were met with a distasteful wrinkling of the nose and a comment that they were “too damn ugly to eat, and certainly too ugly to give away to other people”.
Listen to that sound. Can you hear it? That’s the sound of a broken-hearted cookie crying. It’s certainly not the cookies fault that it looks like a burnt saucer of lumpy porridge. They tried their hardest to appeal – what with it’s chunks of walnut and pecan, sultanas, oats and chocolate, the range of goodness available with every round should appeal to the senses.
And yet…
Nobody wanted to love them.
All these cookies want is to be told that they’re beautiful, and good enough to eat
“Come on, ma!” I cajoled, holding one of these lumpy brown discs under her nose, it’s honeyed scent wafting through the air. “Just take a bite – just the one!”
“Get it away from me!”
“Oh no ma, it’s the cookie express, and it needs a runway to land on! Mayday, mayday, ship is about to go down – please extend the tongue landing strip!”
Funnily enough, that didn’t get any response except an absolutely withering look. Apparantly parents don’t like playing ‘aeroplane’ with their food, whodathunkit?
I gave up. “Ma – just give it a try before you decide they’re not good enough for the christmas goodie hampers, orright? I’ve made about 50-odd of these suckers so just give ‘em a chance!”. I put the cookie down on the table next to her mug of tea and trotted back to the kitchen to continue running my production line of goods. When I flounced back into the lounge a few minutes later, I noticed that the cookie had disappeared – there was not a single crumb to be spotted anywhere on the table.
“Ma…did you give the cookie to the dog?”
“Nope – I ate it! What was I meant to do with it? You told me to eat it, didn’t you? So I ate it! Yeesh!”
I rolled my eyes and trudged back to the kitchen. Usually when my ma approves of a recipe she will wax lyrical about how much she enjoyed it, but the lack of such response after consuming this morsel made me start thinking of what else I could make in their stead, and how long it’d take me to consume the mountain of these cookies that I had sitting on my counter. As I walked away, my mother called out “Hey Ellie!”
“Yeah?”
“Bring me another one of those things, yeah? They’re good!”
And that’s the story of how this humble lumpy cookie made it into our christmas food hampers this year 
Don’t be fooled by their misshapen appearance – these are crisp, chewy, moist and full of flavour – and I guarantee that after the first you’ll find your hand seeking out another…and another…and another 
Ugly Duckling cookies (adapted from AWW, 1994)
Ingredients
125g butter, at room temperature and diced
1 tsp vanilla extract
200g dark brown sugar
100g caster sugar
2 tbsp honey
2 eggs
250g all-purpose flour
1 tsp bicarb soda
150g rolled oats
50g chopped pecans
50g chopped walnuts
50g sultanas
125g white chocolate, chopped
1. Preheat oven to 160 degrees C.
2. Beat butter, vanilla, sugars, honey and eggs till well combined.
3. Sift together flour and bicarb soda, then stir into wet mixture till well combined.
4. Add nuts, chocolate and sultanas and stir till evenly mixed through, then drop teaspoons of the mixture onto lined baking trays, about 5cm apart as they will spread quite a bit.
5. Bake for about 10-15 minutes, or till lightly browned. Cool cookies on tray for about 5 minutes before removing them to wire racks to finish cooling.
These cookies will puff up like little pillows whilst in the oven, but once removed they will flatten into these little discs – do not worry, this is what they’re meant to do! The edges should be crunchy, but the centre should be chewy and moist, punctuated by different bits of flavour from the nuts, chocolate and sultanas. Don’t let their appearance deceive you, these cookies will win your heart from the first mouthful to the very last
[tags]cookies, biscuits, chocolate, drop cookies, recipies, oats[/tags]
