By 3pm today, I had completed several kitchen projects:
- eggs + biscuits for breakfast
- chai tea infused caramels
- pot roast (prepped and in the slow cooker)
- butterscotch oatmeal dough balls
- chai tea infused granola
Phew! It was a busy Sunday! As a 9-to-5 working woman, most of my kitchen projects get squeezed into the weekend, so I have to make the most of my free time.
Most of my goodies were centered around this – chai tea, but there was a lot going on in the kitchen in general today.
I had Ball Jars cleaned and drying out.
Mom’s pot roast (click for recipe) prepped and in the slow cooker.
A new dough ball flavor chilling and waiting to be baked.
Baking sheets waiting for those dough balls to be ready to bake.
Chai tea infused caramels cooking stove top. (I found out later the caramel was hard! Boo…guess I’ll have to try the recipe again and cook for less time?) Does any one know what causes hard caramel?
Chai tea infused granola slowly turning golden in the oven. (The recipe needs tweaking before I share it here on the blog)
As I’ve mentioned many times before here on The Chic Life, I am trying to move away from using plastics.
I’ve been trying to move towards using glass.
I wanted to get some of those glass containers with the flip-open top and silver lever that you press down to seal. However, those aren’t nearly as cost-effective.
So, I got some quart-sized Ball jars a la Emily and will be moving some of my grains and dried beans around. So far, so good!
But here’s what I’m guessing you really wanted…
oh yes…a new dough ball flavor! I actually have two to share with you, but first…
Butterscotch Oatmeal Dough Balls! I actually had one failed batch before I found success with this flavor. Substituting oats for flour is not an easy thing when you’re going for a particular texture. My first attempt turned out like regular (delicious, but flatter) cookies. But, today I found success! Hooray!
Butterscotch Oatmeal Dough Balls
Inspired by Annie the Baker
Makes 14-18 (depending on how you size them)
Be sure to check out my chocolate chip dough balls (click for recipe)!
Ingredients:
- 1 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
- 1/2 cup rolled oats
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/3 cup brown sugar
- 3/4 stick butter, softened/room-temp
- 1 tbsp sugar
- 1 egg (or flaxseed-egg)
- 1/2 tsp vanilla
- 1/2 cup butterscotch chips
Directions:
- Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees F. Prepare baking sheets with parchment paper.
- In a large bowl, whisk together flour, oats, and salt.
- In a medium bowl, mix sugars and butter till creamy. (I used a handheld mixer, but you could probably just use a whisk). Add egg and vanilla and mix till combined.
- Mix wet into the dry. Note: it will appear there is not enough liquid for the amount of dry ingredients, but continue mixing. It will form into a dough, it will just be a firm dough. Careful to not overmix.
- Gently fold butterscotch chips into the dough, without overmixing.
- Refrigerate dough for at least 30 minutes (yes, more than the chocolate chip dough balls) before using a small sorbet scoop to scoop out dough into small mounds. Roll each mound into a ball and spread evenly on a baking sheet, leaving roughly 2-3 inches between each ball.
- Bake balls for 10-14 minutes, depending on how set you want your centers. If you use egg, and you’re paranoid like me, you can use a meat thermometer to ensure the centers of the balls are at least 160 degrees F, which many web sites say is the safe temp to eat eggs.
- Let your dough balls rest on the baking sheet to cool at least 5-10 minutes.
- Enjoy!
These may be more irresistible than the chocolate chip version. I can’t tell. Can you?
***
Anywho, after my kitchen fun, I headed out for an afternoon session of Zumba! I was late for class (I was just attending…not teaching) but still had an awesome time. I left with such a great Zumba-high. You may have seen the following Facebook update on my TCL FB Page or on Twitter:
I came home, twittered with some friends, took a shower, and made mashed potatoes to go with the delish pot roast.
By the way,I’ve been working on an “Artistic Alcatraz” set of photos to share with you guys, which I’ve created using photos I took when I visited Alcatraz a couple weeks ago. The photos are looking really cool, and I can’t wait to share them. Here’s a sneak peek. 
I’m off to watch some football with hubby and cuddle with Bailey before bed. I have a short work week ahead, so I’m excited! Hopefully a lot of people will be out of the office, too, so things will be nice and quiet. I am ready for some easier work days…and holidays!
{ 26 comments… read them below or add one }
Yum! I love butterscotch! I’ll have to try these too
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Chai tea infused granola sounds delicious!
I love tea infused foods. The caramels sound good.
The roast looks incredible! The dough balls are on my list to make after my boys devoured the last batch in a couple of hours!
woohoo! Hopefully, they like the new flavor just as much!
Love the glass jar idea – they look so cool with your spices in them!
Love my glass mason jars
That new dough ball flavor sounds delicious. I need to get on the dough ball making wagon here soon, they all look so good!!
~Lori
They are so tasty! You should def try them.
oooh those dough balls sound fab!
glad you had a fun baking day!
I’ll swap you my soft caramels for your hard ones! Maybe you cooked it too long? I’m thinking with mine I didn’t cook long enough and stirred too much. To try different flavors, I sprinkled culinary lavender, dried orange peel, salted pumpkin seeds, and vanilla salt in rows so I could taste what topping was best. Salted pumpkin seeds and vanilla salt won!
yup, we had similar days in the kitchen yesterday! hopefully your kitchen was not as messy as mine! everything you made sounds wonderful though and I can’t wait to try those cookies!
Mmm that variation looks amazing also! It’s so funny, I’ve been seeing the cookie dough balls all over on blogs, and I can only think of my mom’s chocolate chip cookies that she made for me growing up – they looked EXACTLY like the dough balls! Really puffy and soft, all my friends loved them
What a busy but fun looking Sunday! Those butterscotch oatmeal cookie balls look soo good!
Um, OK, you were a busy bee in the kitchen yesterday! Puts my frozen lasagna to shame!
I feel the exact same way about my kitchen time on Sundays! Except I need to get better at menu planning for a full day of cooking on Sunday.
Where did you buy your jars? Ever since I saw Emily do that, I knew I needed to transition from my wasteful Ziploc bags and move on to Ball jars. Suggestions?
I got mine from a local grocery store. Michael’s sells them individually, but they are cheaper in bulk. You could also possibly try getting some online? So far, they’re working really well! Yay for less plastic!
I love that you are making cookie dough balls in all flavors!
You’ve been a busy lady in the kitchen. I love the jar idea and it looks great as well! The granola sounds fab too! I still need to try the choclate chip dough balls, they are on my list.
I just made the dough balls and mine came out dark on the bottom because the butterscotch chips were melting/burning. How did you keep yours nice and golden? I use the gold tone pans and used parchment. The tops of mine look the same…the bottoms, not so much.
Hey Nicole, I noticed that on mine, when there were butterscotch chips on the bottom, they melted a were slightly burned. But overall, the bottoms were still golden brown. Are you saying the whole bottom was burned?
I should add, only the melted butterscotch seemed to burn…not the rest of the bottom.
The bottoms weren’t totally burned on all of them, but most of them were dark on the bottom and had that slight burnt sugar smell. I’ll just have to try again!
Hey Nicole, I noticed that these dough balls didn’t brown on top like the chocolate chip ones did. I mean…the CC ones browned ever-so-slightly on the very tippy-tops, but these butterscotch balls didn’t really brown for me at all. I think the baking time was about the same as the CC version, but the look of the tops looked pretty white and like raw dough still. lol You may want to try just baking one or two first, let them rest, cut into them and check the texture. Then see if you want to cook it longer or for less time.
OMG Diana! I just made these and substituted 1/2c. white chocolate chips and 1/4 cup dried cranberries for the 1/2 butterscotch chips and they turned out AMAZING! Definately worth your trying….:)
Oops, somehow I missed this comment. Sorry for the extremely late reply, but just wanted to say thanks so much for checking out my recipe! Glad you liked it!
Made these dough balls today!!!! The husband doesn’t like butterscotch, so I used just under a quarter cup each of white chocolate, dried cranberries, and macadamia nuts. SOOOO good!!!!
Ooh, love your substitutions – the mix of those ingredients sounds divine! Glad to hear you liked them!
Thanks Carly!