Now, this is not just any old cookie recipe. No; this recipe is my last bastion of recipe secretiveness. In celebration of more than a month of our new life as well as the start of a promising new school year, I have decided to give you all the last recipe that I’ve been keeping locked up. Before now, the only person I’ve given this recipe to was my BFF- and I made her swear that she would NEVER give the recipe to anyone. I even went so far as to ask her to immediately delete the email that contained it. So, my dear BFF, you are hereby set free from your sworn secrecy. If you would like to share the recipe, be my guest. If you don’t, I understand 😉 So let’s get down to it and make some Oatmeal Cookies!!

I have never been a huge fan of oatmeal cookies. I like them ok but they’ve never been my favorite. My husband, on the other hand, really likes them and asked me to make him some awesome oatmeal cookies. So I started researching recipes and came up with this one. It’s not a cakey cookie but it is a soft cookie so just that starts it off right. I don’t like crunchy cookies unless they’re Oreos or the like (which I can still take or leave) and Ron made it clear he doesn’t like crunchy oatmeal cookies. So these will be soft and chewy. These are also incredibly mediocre if you try to eat them straight out of the oven. You almost can’t taste the spices in them at all when they’re fresh. But let them sit overnight or freeze and then thaw them and they are phenomenal!! Spicy (not the hot kind!), sweet, and chewy- everything an old fashioned oatmeal cookie should be!

These cookies are incredibly basic. All you need is this:

(Can I just say right now that I DESPISE doing the ingredient picture!! It seems I always forget something! This time it’s the brown sugar. Completely forgot it while I was fussing with everything, trying to make it look right and readable. HATE ingredients pictures!! Rant over.)

Make sure your butter is soft, measure out your ingredients, and you’re ready for SCP. That would be Standard Cookie Procedure. If you were to take a look at the cards in my recipe box, you would see a lot of recipes with no directions at all. I’ve been cooking and baking long enough that I know how to make most of my recipes just by looking at the title and the ingredients. And, honestly, most recipes fall under one of a few categories: Standard Quick Bread Procedure, Standard Yeast Bread Procedure, Standard Soup/Stew Procedure, Standard Casserole Procedure… you get the point. On most of my cookie recipes you’ll find, if anything, SCP. By that I know that I am to cream the butter and sugar, add the eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition, then add the vanilla and any other liquid ingredient, beat some more, and then start adding the combined dry ingredients, scraping down the bowl at least once. After that it’s scoop and bake. If the dough needs to chill I’ll usually note that because, for me, that is outside SCP. So simply follow SCP and you’re good to go!!

Make sure the butter and sugar are completely creamed together. Then add your eggs…

Let the mixer run for about 30 seconds after each egg to make sure they are well incorporated. And scrape the bowl down like I did above. Add your dry ingredients, flour mixture first and then the oatmeal…

Your dough should still be very moist. It shouldn’t be crumbly at all. Make sure you use large eggs or else you won’t have enough liquid and protein from them for the cookies to turn out properly soft.

Ron and Zachariah like raisins, Liliana and I can take them or leave them, and Gloriana flat hates them. She likes oatmeal cookies, but always asks for them plain so I have to split the batch. This time Gloriana had a wonderful idea: dried apples. It was a stroke of genius! She’s good at that. My other two kids have good suggestions for meals and things when I ask them what they want. But Gloriana is really great at ideas for recipes. I’ve gotten a few recipe ideas from her over the years and she loves to help 🙂 As I’m splitting the batch anyway, it’s no big deal. So I bought some of the chewy dried apples and used kitchen shears to chop them into roughly raisins sized pieces. Once you’ve got the dry ingredients mixed in and have your basic dough, split the dough into two bowls. Mix the raisins into one and the apples into the other. Hmmm… or you could put both into the one batch of dough. That sounds good. Might have to try that! Anyway, add the fruits and mix well.

Now all that’s left is to scoop these onto cookie sheets and bake them in your (hopefully already preheated) oven. I use regular sized spoons like you’d eat ice cream with. Someday soon I’ll get cool little cookie scoops, but for now it’s spoons. I suppose it comes out to about 1 & 1/2 – 2 tablespoons of dough for each cookie. Space them about 2 inches apart and put one sheet at a time into the oven. You could do two sheets and swap the bottom sheet for the top halfway through, but I prefer to just do one at a time.

Bake the cookies for anywhere from 8-12 minutes. I usually set the timer for the least amount of time for the first batch and adjust accordingly. Some people do a test cookie. I don’t, but I can certainly see why some do. If you want to, please go ahead 🙂 When the first batch is about 3 minutes from being done, start scooping the next batch onto a cookie sheet. That way, when the batch in the oven is done you’ll have another sheet ready to go in and you’ll save time.

When the cookies are done, let them sit on the cookie sheet for about a minute and then take a spatula and transfer them to a cooling rack.

The end of Summer is in sight and soon the school buses will reappear. My kids are super excited about school starting. They’ve always loved school, but this year is special because they get to go to a new school in a different state. But if your kids are lamenting the end of summer, this is a wonderful way to help them ease back into the school year. It will be a little taste of home and how much they are loved 🙂

The Recipe:

1 C Butter, softened (Room Temperature)

1 C Brown Sugar, packed

1/2 C Granulated Sugar

2 Eggs (Large)

1 t Vanilla

1 1/2 C All Purpose Flour

1 t Baking Soda

1/2 t Salt

1 t Cinnamon

1/4 t Nutmeg

3 C Oats

1 C Raisins or other dried fruit, in raisin sized pieces (optional)

The Method:

*Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

*Follow SCP 😉

In other words…

*Combine the flour, baking soda, salt, and spices and set aside.

*In the bowl of a stand mixer of in a large bowl with a hand mixer beat butter until smooth.

*Add sugars to butter and cream at medium speed until lightened and as smooth as you can get it.(See picture above)

*Add the vanilla and the eggs, one at a time, beating after each.

*Scrape down the sides of the bowl.

*On low speed, gradually add the flour mixture, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. Make sure the flour is completely mixed in.

*Still on low, mix in the oats. Make sure they are completely incorporated.

*If using, add in the dried fruit.

*Scoop onto cookie sheets, spacing each scoop about 2 inches apart.

*Bake each tray for 8-12 minutes, until the cookies are cooked through but only just and beginning to turn golden around the edges.

*Once removed from the oven, let the cookies sit on the tray for one minute. Then carefully remove to a cooling rack with a spatula (the thinner the spatula the better).

*To ensure the cookies stay nice and soft, I put them into the zip top bags or containers while they are still slightly warm and close the bag or put the cover on the container.

*Store in an airtight container. Will keep for about 3-4 days before they start getting crumbly.