Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Raisin Cookies

This recipe is an old one but a good one.  They are the cookies that my mom would make when my brother and I were growing up (and still makes them now).  They have also become my standby I-need-to-bake-something-for-this baked good.

These cookies are no fuss, reliably turn out tasty and are always a crowd pleaser (unless you're a certain one of my friends who has "texture issues" with raisins in cookies in which case I will bastardize the recipe and leave the raisins out even though I think they really make the cookies, but I digress).

According to the recipe that my mom has, this is a Mrs. Field's recipe, but I don't really have any way of confirming it since it was copied down by a friend of hers over 20 years ago.

Here's what you'll need to make my Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Raisin Cookies:

1 cup butter, softened
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar

2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla

2 cups flour
3 cups oatmeal
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder

1 1/2 cups chocolate chips
1 1/2 cups raisins

Before you start making the cookie dough, turn your oven on so it can preheat to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Put the butter and sugars into a large mixing bowl and then cream them together.  

I like to crack my eggs into a glass before adding them so I can be sure that no shell has fallen in.  After I do that, I can add the eggs and vanilla and mix well.

At this point most recipes tell you to mix all the dry ingredients together before gradually adding them to the wet.  But I have tried this recipe by doing that and also by just dumping them all into the mixing bowl at once and quite frankly, for this recipe you cannot tell the difference.  So save yourself another dirty bowl and go ahead and add the flour, oatmeal, salt, baking soda and baking powder to your wet ingredients and mix until combined.

Add the chocolate chips and raisins; I like to do one and then the other.  I like my cookies loaded, so if you like more cookie and less chocolatey/raisiny goodness, go ahead and add less.  I don't know why you would, but it's your kitchen and you can do whatever you want.  And I'll do whatever I want, and I want a lot.

Go ahead and eat some dough, you know you want to!

Drop spoonfuls of the cookie dough onto an ungreased cookie sheet.  I like to use my cookie dough scoop largely because it gives me consistently sized cookies. 

And I like to use my Silpats on my cookie sheets because it prevents any sticking.  It also makes the cookies bake more evenly in my runs-kind-of-hot-especially-in-one-corner-but-mostly-from-the-bottom-so-it's-easy-to-burn-stuff-on-the-bottom-before-it's-cooked-on-the-top oven.  I have noticed that the Silpats create a cookie that puffs up more instead of spreading out a bit, so if you want your cookie flatter, smoosh them down a bit if you're using one.  And if you'r not using one just be forewarned that your cookie will be a little flatter, but no less delicious and will still come off the cookie sheet with ease.

Now pop those suckers in the oven.  Mine were done in 6 minutes, but your baking time may very depending on your oven.  I also like my cookies to be nice and chewy, so if you want it crisper bake it longer.

 Nice and gooey

This recipe yields about 5 dozen cookies, and while that sounds like a lot, they don't last long in our house or at parties.  So hurry up and grab a glass of milk while the cookies are warm before your family eats them all without you!

No-bake cookies

The hubs has been asking me to make these for a while, so in honor of the Superbowl I decided to find a recipe for some no-bakes to try them out in hopes of having them live up to Thomas' expectations.  I snagged a recipe from a friend and tweaked it just slightly based on a few other recipes I saw.

2 cups sugar
1/2 cup milk

1/4 pound of butter (1 stick)
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup peanut butter
3 cups oatmeal

3/4 cup shredded coconut (optional)

For anyone trying to cut calories, she has this to say about the butter, "It's VERY important to not use tub margarine in this recipe. If you do, the cookies will turn out black and will never properly harden."  So let that be a warning to you all.  And let's face it, butter makes everything better.  And I'd rather put something natural in my body that happens to have a bit more fat in it than something with less fat but is laden with chemicals, so that's my two cents on the matter.

Back to the cookies!

Combine the sugar, milk, butter and cocoa powder in a large sauce pan on the stove.  Heat until butter is melted.  Be sure to stir continuously so nothing burns to the bottom of the pan.  Bring the contents of the pan to a full boil and let it boil for a full minute, timing accurately.

Remove the sauce pan from heat.  Stir in the peanut butter, salt and vanilla until well combined.  Tip: if you give your measuring cup a little shot of Pam before measuring the peanut butter it will be much easier to get out of the measuring cup and clean later.  Add the oatmeal and coconut and stir.  I used regular oatmeal, so I put the lid back on the pan and let the residual heat work on the oatmeal for around 5 minutes to soften it up a bit.  If you used quick cooking 1 minute oats then you don't have to do that.

Drop by spoonfuls onto wax paper (or a silpat) and let harden.  If you want to speed that up a bit, pop them in the fridge.

I made two batches, one with coconut and one without.  Both were equally well received.  I thought the coconut gave it a little extra chew and structural integrity and overall liked them more, but both were good.  Most people couldn't really tell the difference between the cookies with and without coconut, so take that for what you will.

We also found out that if you're from Minnesota you call these something else, because upon entering our friends' house and announcing that we had brought no-bakes we were met with a resounding chorus of "Oaties!!".

And yes, they did live up to Thomas' expectations, so this recipe lives on to be used again another day.