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.
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.
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!
