Compared to the way I was during the waning years of my “Mr. Suburban Man” phase, I’m now a very “up” person. Not half as paranoid, angry, suspicious, and generally unpleasant to be around as I used to be. At least, I don’t think I am.
But I still have days when nothing pleases me, I get angry at the slightest provocation, and I don’t want to do anything but sit and mope. For days like that, I have learned to bake.
And if you’re into oatmeal/raisin cookies, this is the best recipe I’ve encountered.
Goes like this:
1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup butter/margarine
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
2 beaten eggs
1 tbsp vanilla
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 cups flour
1 cup raisins
3 cups old-fashioned oatmeal
Preheat the oven to 3500.
Cream together the shortening/butter with the sugar. Add the eggs and vanilla and stir it all up.
Separately mix the flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Add the dry mix to the wet mix. Add the raisins and mix.
Stir in the oatmeal one cup at a time, until it’s all moistened.
Put it on cookie sheets a tablespoon at a time and cook for no more than 10 minutes, even if they look a bit underdone. Don’t overcook these, or they’ll be tooth-breakers when they’ve had a day to set up.
The only real problem with this recipe is it yields more than four dozen, and my waistline doesn’t need that. I could graze on these all afternoon. But I figure my friend D probably needs some fattening up, so I’ll bring half over there during afternoon chores.
One thing I see different. My recipe calls for baking SODA. Most baking powder contains aluminum, and you don’t need that in cookies, if in anything, since it is toxic. I also use twice or three times as much vanilla and cinnamon. Sometimes I use “apple pie spice,” a mixture of cinnamon, ginger, cloves and nutmeg.
And I’m wondering about your measurement of the shortening or what type you are using. I use nothing but coconut oil, and my cookies come out nice and brown – and stay moist and chewy for as long as they last. I’ve frozen some (so I don’t have them all immediately available), and they thaw out moist and chewy as well.
If yours get hard, I suspect your dry ingredients are not balanced right with the wet ones. Try another egg next time. Or a few tablespoons of water. The oats will absorb a lot of moisture.
That’s very similar to my oatmeal cookie recipe (which I’m just about to make for the first time in years). Only I dislike little squishy bug-like raisins hiding in otherwise edible food, so I use either sunflower seeds or chopped cashews instead. And nutmeg.
But your recipe is close enough to sound really delicious. Glad it cheered you up!
Your recipe is almost a duplicate of the one my mom baked. I don’t like the lumps of raisins either, so I chop/grind up the raisins and add them when I am creaming the fats and sugars to get the raisins evenly distributed through the dough. (The raisins are a sticky lump.) The other nice thing about chopping the raisins is you can cut the sugar by a 1/3 and still have the same level of sweetness. Mom added a cup of chopped nuts to the dough when she had them. You can switch out the raisins for dates or any other dried fruit for a change of pace if you are interested.
Oh, I dunno, Joel. I didn’t find you all that unpleasant to be around. Maybe because were were always both armed to the teeth. An armed society is a polite society.
You can get baking powder that doesn’t contain aluminum. Read the labels. I know Frontier carries it bulk.
Yes, Howard, and I’ve used the non-aluminum kind for many years. Problem is that a lot of folks don’t know about it yet. 🙂 I don’t use much baking powder these days, since I’ve found that an equal amount of baking soda does the job in most cases. Unless you need a “quick bread” that rises a lot, there isn’t much other use for it. 🙂
Rumford baking powder is commercially available in grocery stores and does not have aluminum. And if you want a little boost to your baked goods, a small bit of Bakewell Cream will do that. I think it is cream of tartar in a pretty can. 2/3 tsp Bakewell Cream and 1/3 tsp baking soda = 1 tsp baking powder. Dusting dried fruit with a little flour (especially chopped fruit) before adding it to doughs can keep the fruit nicely separated although you may see a bit of flour in the creases in the fruit.
This blog is a wonderful daily real life experience – wayward cattle, rats, chickens, cookies, solar power, decorating, remodeling, vehicles that don’t start or run, moving hay bales, water pumps that don’t, water so hard it can form a crust on your face over time. Yup.
Surely you understand there is no shortage of “locals” who will be GLAD to help you dispose of excess cookies, in order to make sure your girth does not increase beyond reasonable limits. I would suggest that some of your bird-brained friends get first shot, and after that you can “horse around” with another crowd that will LUV them some oatmeal-raisin cookies. In fact, you might have to make a double batch in order to provide a reasonable level of satisfaction…
I have found that oatmeal raisin cookies can be slightly improved by adding about 2 tbs of coconut rum to the mix in addition to the vanilla…it adds a bit more complexity to the taste.