Oatmeal-Raisin-Walnut Cookie/En Garde, Chocolat!

I'm extremely suspicious of people who do not like chocolate. I know, people who claim they looooove chocolate are dime-a-dozen; even confirmed connoisseurs can be easily found. But people who don't like chocolate? It's just not natural.

Even if you didn't, would you go around admitting that fact? You don't publicly admit "I don't like chocolate/children/Nature?", do you. I don't get it.

So when I have to bake for a chocolate non-lover, I make sure I do my homework. I search for that recipe that will help me forget the existence of cacao beans. It's hard, so I make sure I rope in my arsenal of brown sugar, butter and cinnamon.

Oatmeal-raisin cookies! I tend to make giant cookies, so I can have a cookie and wash it down with milk on those hurry-burried mornings where breakfast is not an option. Sometimes, I sneak peanut butter and chocolate chips into the dough. Or go down the spice route, incorporating ginger and orange zest, for a Body Shop Christmas-inspired cookie. Whilst I love chewy, soft cookies, when I give them to people, they think I'm an incompetent baker. True story.

So. I give you, a very basic crispy Oatmeal-raisin cookie, adapted from a popular AllRecipes recipe. Cookies are treacherous things; they flop quite often. This recipe is an easy entry into the wonderful world of cookies.

Oatmeal-Raisin-Walnut cookies.

Ingredients:

3/4 cup butter, at room temperature

3/4 cup granulated white sugar

3/4 cup packed light brown sugar

2 eggs, at room temperature

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (maida)

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder.

1/2 a cinnamon bark or 3/4 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 3/4 cups Quaker Oats
3/4 cup raisins, steeped in hot water for 5 minutes and drained.

1/2 cup walnuts, chopped.

Method:

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees Celsius.

Grind the coarse sugar with bits of cinnamon in your mixie just until it's gritty, NOT fine.

Cream the butter, the white sugar and the brown sugar until smooth.

Whisk the eggs separately. Or you can skip this and add the eggs straight.

Add it into the batter with the vanilla. Beat until smooth.

In a separate bowl, stir together the maida, baking powder and baking soda. Fold into the batter. 

Fold in the oats. Stir the nuts and raisins.

Don't over mix or use a hand mixer for dry ingredients. I can say this each time I do a baking post, and it still won't be enough to drive home the point... it took me several flops to accept this.

I usually wrap the dough in cling film and refrigerate the dough for half an hour.

On a baking tray lined with aluminium foil (ungreased), drop a mini-scoop of ice cream shaped ball of cookie dough. Flatten it.

Bake for 8-10 minutes, until the edges are slightly brown.

Do a test run with the cookies. Just so you know how much they spread out or puff up, and more crucially, how long they take. If you bake for fewer minutes, you'll have chewy cookies.

Take them out of the oven. Cool them in their sheets for ten minutes. Transfer to a wire rack, and let them cool completely.

Store in an airtight tin. Or leave them unattended, so they can be gobbled up.

Tie pretty ribbons around them, so ideal for gifting. The non-pretty ones can be sandwiched with butterscotch ice-cream, frozen, softened, and eaten. Yum.



Freeze between sheets of butter-paper. Thaw for an easy
ice-cream sandwich!



I ate quite a bit of the dough and the crumbly bits. The chocolate-hating girl these were baked for did call me mental when I told her on PMS-days I eat Chocos for breakfast and Nutella on Wholegrain bread (healthy, but the Nutella kills any little gram of healthiness that remained) for lunch. Justifies the stealing.