Oatmeal Raisin Chocolate Chip Cookies

Two posts - one day.  I've all ready surpassed my last attempt!  For no real reason, I decided that I was going to bake for my coworkers and wanted to make something different than just standard chocolate chip cookies (which I had all the ingredients for all ready) but also wasn't interested in buying a slew of additional items.  This brought me to Oatmeal Raisin cookies (which at its base is nearly identifical) and a friend suggested adding the chocolate chips.  Ingredients, recipe, and general baking antics after the jump!

Recipe (Adapted from the recipe on the underside of the Quaker Oats lid)

1 stick + 6 tablespoons of butter Softened (or just 14 tablespoons)
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
3'ish cups of oats (I used Quaker Old-Fashion Oats)
1 tsp'ish cinnamon
1 tsp'ish vanilla extract
Raisins
Mini sized chocolate chips [Optional.  They are still great without the chocolate and I actually prefer them this way]

Housekeeping:  For this recipe, you need one large bowl and one medium sized bowl, a cookie sheet, and while not fully required I would definitely suggest some kind of mixer, hand or stand doesn't make a difference. 

Time Investment: Prep time: 10 minutes (if you remember to pre-soften the butter) Cook time: 8-11 minutes

Yields: Around 3 dozen cokies

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and then realize you forgot to put the butter out to soften. Crap!  Put butter out to soften, return an hour and a half later after watching the movie Drinking Buddies (which by the way, was great - definitely suggest seeing it).

Okay - now you're actually ready to go.  In your smaller bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and cinnamon; mix.  You'll see that for the last few ingredients on this recipe there aren't any solid measurements and the reason for that is because I've inherited this horrible habit from my father of not fully measuring things.  I personally LOVE cinnamon, so I probably added more like 2-3 teaspoons. The way I decide how much cinnamon to add is by sprinkling some in, mixing it all around and seeing how I feel about the ratio of flour to cinnamon and if it smells cinnamony enough.  For both the cinnamon and vanilla - the original recipe only calls for 1 teaspoon.  You can just mix this together with a fork.  Set aside.



Next, in your large bowl use your mixer to blend sugar and butter together until fully mixed and it becomes creamy.  It's really important to wait until your butter is actually soft, because this is a real challenge to do with hard butter - speaking from a lot of previous experience.

Add 2 eggs and vanilla (again, I love vanilla so I probably added more like 2 teaspoons.  I mostly go by scent on this just like the cinnamon).  Mix until fully blended.


Now, slowly add your dry ingredients - and if you're not a regular baker and think you can just add them all at once let me save you a heartache when I say DON'T.  Adding everything at once will make mixing this together much more annoying and you risk over-mixing the dough which can make it tougher.

This dough, by the way could be used for regular chocolate chip cookies if you just skip the cinnamon and only add in the chocolate chips from here on out.

 

Now, mix in first all of your oats, once well blended add your raisins and chocolate, if desired.  For the raisins and chocolate I just gradually added each ingredient until the proportions looked right.  You could definitely use regular sized chocolate chips for this recipe, but I had these adorable miniature sized ones from a previous project and I felt like it gave me the freedom to make smaller cookies and not overwhelm the raisins.

Now's the hard part, don't eat your dough, and roll your cookies into your desired size and place on your baking sheet.  I sprayed Pam on my baking sheet, but you could also use tin foil (which I actually wound up switching to at a later batch because I felt like my bottoms kept getting burnt even with the Pam).  I know, I have a gross baking sheet.

Bake the cookies for 8-11 minutes, depending on their size and how you prefer your cookies.  I found that around 9 minutes seemed to be the best time.  It left them really chewy but not feeling under-cooked.  This is the kind of cookie that still looks uncooked even when they are and to avoid over-cooking look at the edge of the cookie to determine if you want to take them out.  If your cookie looks lightly browned around the edges of the cookie you're probably good to go.  It took me about 3 batches to make all the dough.

In between batches, I suggest putting your dough in the fridge, and taking it back out when you remove them - this stops the dough from getting either too soft from sitting out, or too hard from sitting the fridge the whole time.  If it gets too soft, rolling them gets challenging and if it gets too cold then your cook time will get off.

This cookies were a HUGE hit at work - like I mentioned they wind up being really chewy and I think the cinnamon adds a nice little spice that is a surprise.  They feel very Christmas-y and leave your kitchen smelling yummy.  I probably added a little more than the 3 cups of oats, so they felt a little heartier and as one of my coworkers commented "makes them more healthy - right?"

They're a really quick and easy cookie to change up from your basic chocolate chip, and like I mentioned earlier could be made without the chocolate.