Oatmeal and Raisin Cookies
Recipe Review: I had reduced the amount of both sugar. If you prefer sweeter & crispier oatmeal cookies, stick to the recipe. I freeze half the dough (roll them into 1″ ball and put in a container) for another day and refrigerated the other half for about 2 hours to prevent the batter from spreading. The instruction in the recipe is to ‘drop tablespoonfuls of the mixture’ onto the trays ‘spacing them at least 4cm apart as the mixture will spread’, then ‘pat them down so they are slightly flattened’. I like my cookies smaller, about 1″ balls, so reduced the baking time to about 10 to 12 minutes instead of the 15-20 minutes recommended. If you refrigerate the dough like me, the batter will not spread and you will really need to flatten it when placing it on the baking tray. Baked them for about 10 minutes then you have to watch over them. With so little flour, they can burn easily. If you freeze the dough, you can bake them anytime when you need to top up your stash of nibbles. Simply take them out from the freezer, let it sit on the counter for about 10 minutes, and bake.
These cookies are chewy and really quick and simple to put together. I like them not only because of the flavour and texture, but also because the cookies has more oats than flour and they taste good even though I reduced the sugar.
Storage: They will keep for about 5 days in an airtight container
Book Review: If you have read my other posts, you would know that I love recipe books that have recipes with accompanying photograph. That is what I find lacking in this book. How else can you check whether the final bake is what the recipe is about? The aim of the book ‘to provide the same guiding hand, helpful advice and information that students have enjoyed over the past 40 years or so, as they join us on a cooking course at Leiths’ and ‘to give you the confidence to make the decision to remove the cake or cookie at the perfect moment’. I would say that though the Getting Started and Technique sections provide some useful guides, it is a tall order to be able to achieve confidence by simply baking from these recipes. Overall, the recipes have detailed instructions and the collection of bakes is quite good. Whether they are good recipes or not, let me try out a few recipes, chocolate & orange marbled loaf cake (pg86) and honey loaf cake (pg89), before I can conclude.
Ingredients
- 100 g raisins
- 120 g butter (I used unsalted, room temperature)
- 50 g caster sugar (original – 75g)
- 50 g light brown sugar (original – 75g)
- 1 large egg, beaten
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 100 g self-raising flour
- 250 g rolled oats
Directions
- In a small bowl, add boiling water and raisin, set aside.
- Using an electric hand whisk, cream the butter and sugars until pale and fluffy.
- Stir in the vanilla extract into the egg mixture. Gradually whisk the egg into the butter mixture.
- Fold the flour into the batter.
- Drain the raisins. Stir in the oats and raisins until just combined, do not overmix. The mixture should be slightly stiff because there is quite a huge amount of rolled oats compared to the liquid. The recipe suggested using a bit of water to loosen the mixture if too stiff. Chill the batter for at least 2 hours.
- To bake the cookies, preheat the oven to 350ºF / 180ºC (fan-forced oven 20°F lower). Line two baking trays with baking/parchment paper.
- Scoop out 1-inch diameter dough using a teaspoon and place them evenly spaced on the baking sheet, flatten the tops with your hand. Bake 10 to 12 minutes (see notes) or until the edges of the cookie turn golden brown, slightly firm around the edges but still soft in center. You can also follow the original recipe as indicated in my notes.
- Let the cookies set for 1 to 2 minutes before transferring them to cool completely on a wire rack.
My Home Kitchen 