If you read the title of this recipe carefully, or looked at the pics closely, you’ll notice that these aren’t just your ordinary chocolate chip cookies. These are incredibly chewy, perfectly sweet, fat little Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies with an unusual ingredient that lends crunch and saltiness in each bite: crispy toasted tater tots.
That’s right, there are potatoes in these cookies. Potatoes are vegetables. Therefore this is a salad.
(Right?)
Anyway. You can’t immediately tell that cookies have crushed up tots in them. But you’ll definitely notice a little bit of extra texture – crunchy bits and creamy bites all together – that make these special. But to me, these cookies and this recipe are extra special because they’re from Dan from The Food in My Beard.
Long time readers of this blog know that Dan is one of my very good friends, and one of my favorite bloggers of all time. He and I have shared some fun adventures over the years – we’ve cooked together, hosted parties, taught classes, created many recipes, ate our way through different events, and we were even in an international TV show together!
Dan is a mad genius with the most creative mind, and he is always dreaming up all these mouthwatering ways to serve up comfort food. His second cookbook (!!) is coming out next week, called Tots!: 50 Tot-ally Awesome Recipes from Totchos to Sweet Po-tot-o Pie.
I received an early copy (you can pre-order here) and while I was tempted by tons of appetizers, I knew I wanted to make the tot cookies.
One of the best things about Dan’s recipes is that not only are they really easy to follow, but they’re also very customizable to make it your own. His original tot cookie recipe in the cookbook is for Salted Caramel Tot Cookies, and I just modified it by swapping out caramel with coconut.
(Confession: I also made the Salted Caramel Cookies and they are also awesome.)
Adding tater tots to cookies is similar to adding potato chips or pretzels, so fans of those kinds of cookies (“everything but the sink”) would appreciate these. But if you just like cookies in general (if you don’t, are you even human?) then I promise you that you will enjoy these.
Tots! will be released on May 15th, and I hope you guys will pick up a copy and make something tot-ally delicious.
Congrats, Dan!! <3
Chewy chocolate chip and coconut cookies with an unusual ingredient: crushed up tater tots. Modified from the Salted Caramel Tot Cookies by Dan Whalen from the cookbook Tots!
10 frozen tots
1 1/2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
3/4 cups (1 1/4 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup sweetened coconut flakes
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
I made three modifications from the original recipe: 1) I replaced the caramel candy pieces in the original recipe with sweetened coconut flakes. 2) I froze the cookies for 30 minutes before baking. 3) I also cut the original recipe in half and used a tablespoon-sized cookie scoop.
Modified from the Salted Caramel Tot Cookies recipe from the cookbook Tots! by Dan Whalen.