Oatmeal Craisin Cookies

Oatmeal Craisin Cookies

  

Finished Oatmeal Craisin cookies that I really like :)

 

Have you ever gone to a plate of cookies and picked up what you thought was a chocolate chip cookie, only to find out that it was one of those nasty oatmeal raisin cookies? Yea, me too. It's pretty disappointing. Most of the time, I don't like oatmeal cookies, let alone oatmeal. I'm not a huge fan of raisins, either. A few years ago, a family member bought some Quaker Oats Oatmeal, which came with a recipe for oatmeal cookies, and she decided to make them. Later, the same family member asked me to make the cookies for them. At first, I didn't like the cookies very much, but gradually I made a few alterations to the recipe to make them much more suited to my taste. 

Oatmeal cookies have been around for a long time, and oatmeal has been around even longer. Some of the first appearances of the cookie go back all the way to when the Romans first invaded England (More about history). I'm not certain if they were anything like the sugary cookies we have now, but the concept of a cookie made of oatmeal is practically ancient.

To me, a lot of today's oatmeal cookies are thin and bland. I really like large oatmeal cookies that are crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside with craisins and finely chopped walnuts in between. That sounds a lot better than dried oatmeal with raisins. I use the Vanishing Oatmeal Raisin Cookies by Quaker Oats (here), but I made a few alterations in the recipe that make these cookies one of my personal favorites. 

In the recipe, it calls for 1/2 cup plus 6 tablespoons of butter. In the cookies I make, I usually put an extra tablespoon of butter, just because I bake them longer than the recipe calls for.

The only other thing I changed in the actual ingredients is the raisins. Because I don't like raisins. Instead, I substitute them with a 1/2 cup of craisins and a 1/2 cup of FINELY chopped walnuts. .

They have to be the finely chopped walnuts, or they change the texture of the cookie.

Using a standing mixer really helps speed the process up a bit. It is really hard to mix after the oats are added.

These oatmeal cookies will turn out to be really big and almost fluffy. They have a great chewy texture in the middle without being gooey.

I make the dough balls about 1/4 of a cup to achieve what is to me the perfect size cookie.

Because the recipe calls for the cookies to be little tablespoon sized cookies, the bake time is shorter. Since the cookies will be so much bigger, they need to bake longer. I bake mine for 15 minutes and 30 seconds to achieve the golden brown look.

The finished product!

Apple Pies on a Whim

Picture I took of some of the apples that were picked.

At the present moment, apple picking season is in full swing! What does that mean to apple lovers everywhere? Cider, cobblers, applesauce, and PIE. 

A relative and a few friends decided to go apple picking at an orchard near us and brought back bags of apples, not really knowing what to do with them. So, in a spur-of-the-moment type of thing, we decided to make an apple pie. The pie, or what turned out to be pies, ended up varying from the original recipe (here) because we didn't really have a great dish to bake it in and we didn't have enough flour, since it was made on a whim with little to no preparations.

Below are some pictures depicting the process of how we ended up making our pie(s). For the filling, we just split the entire bowl between two pie dishes, although only one is pictured. For the crusts, the recipe calls for double the amount of pie crust in their original recipe, but we only made enough to cover the pies and not enough for the bottom layer. We used the graham cracker crust for the bottoms of the pies. It probably would have turned out a bit better if we hadn't used to graham cracker crusts. It's not entirely a bad alternative, though. 

Making the pie filling.                                                              Making the top of the pie crusts. 

Although it differed from the original recipe, it actually turned out pretty well. I wasn't so fond of the graham cracker crust on the bottom because it ended up slightly burnt. Oh well. I would advise following the recipe, although I did like making two pies instead of one. 

This looks like an angry face to me >w<

Here are both of the pies we ended up making.

Recreational Baking

Chocolate Mice that I made 

Cooking: (n). 1. The act of preparing food to eat.

Most everyone has to do it. Some enjoy spending time and effort cooking more than others. Some, like myself, find it to be an irksome and mundane task. For many of us average folk, preparing the same old breakfasts, lunches, and dinners week in and week out becomes a chore very quickly. That is why I infinitely prefer baking over cooking.

Baking: (n). 1. Cooking food without direct exposure to a flame, typically in an oven or over a hot surface.

Simply put, baking is making an edible treat for yourself or someone else. Unlike cooking, you can make what you bake cute, colorful, and appealing as well as delicious. Some of my favorite things to make are chocolate mousse, cookies, and yes, cake.

I don't really plan on making a career of baking or anything like that. To me, it is just an enjoyable hobby. It's entertaining to see what you can create with food and how your creation turns out once you have finished it.

                                    "If you're afraid of butter, use cream."

-Julia Child