Hi Everyone,
This cookie ain’t gonna crumble. This cookie ain’t hard. This cookie is soft and chewy. While there are many varieties of cookies, a lot of them claim to be warm, soft and chewy, evoking feelings of comfort, but when you bite into them, they are anything but, with many of them turning to granules in your mouth. Not so with this oatmeal and raisin cookie. It delivers.
Oatmeal and raisin cookies are an old favourite of many people and it’s a cookie that’s been around for generations. It is one of the standard cookies in which you’ll hear people say, “It’s like my gran used to make.” By the time I came along my maternal grandparents had passed on and my paternal granny never made cookies, neither did my mom or aunts. Buns, pones, breads, cakes and pastries they made but no cookies. Don’t feel sorry for me, I never had a sweet tooth and the only cookie I ever thought worthy was Mrs Cummings’ Butter Cookies (which I wrote about a couple of years ago). Given all of this, it begs the question, what’s up with this oatmeal and raisin cookie?
I like to bake and I often make things that I don’t really like or eat but I do so for the experience of doing it, the joy of experimenting, and to feed family and friends. As I left work last Friday, one of my friends who is also one of my tasters, asked in the most circuitous of ways if I was baking the weekend. I told her I wasn’t because I had grading of assignments to catch up on. I do not like grading, and baking is one of the things I do when I want to escape from it. I guess after all that I was going to be baking the weekend. In a situation like this, I tend to go to simpler recipes as they require little effort, hence the oatmeal and raisin cookies.
In addition to being soft and chewy, I wanted to ensure that the cookies would have some ‘body’ to them (thickness). I never understand how cookies that are meant to be soft and chewy are presented as flat discs. To counter this happening I put some cornstarch in the mix. When cornstarch is added to baked goods, such as cookies, the result when baked is tender, and secondly, during baking, the heat causes the starch to combine with molecules of water, this causes the starch to swell as it absorbs the liquid. That is how theses cookies are able to be soft and have some thickness. To be chewy it is a matter of putting in an adequate amount of raisins and not overcooking the cookies.
(Photo by Cynthia Nelson)
To bump up the flavour of the cookies, I plumped up the raisins with aged dark rum. When I was ready to use them, the raisins were swollen with booze. As you bite into the cookies, you will find yourself feeling as if there is Christmas fruit in the cookie – it’s the rum in the raisins.
Finally, the other key ingredient to make these cookies stand out is the use of top quality molasses. Since we live in the Caribbean that should not be an issue. You want to get the dark molasses and the one that comes from sugar cane not beet juice that has been boiled down or burnt sugar. The molasses helps to make the cookie soft too, provides depth of flavour and gives the cookie a rich shiny, chocolatey-colour.
My 4 tasters ate all of their share of the cookies in almost one go. I managed to get one cookie out of the lot. If I may join in with the others – the cookies were outstanding, worthy of a column.
Go ahead, have a cookie, and share the rest.
Cynthia
Oatmeal & Raisin Cookies
Yield: 16 – 18
INGREDIENTS
- 4 oz. / ½ cup unsalted butter, room temperature
- ½ cup brown sugar
- ¼ cup white sugar
- 1 egg, room temperature
- 1 tablespoon molasses
- ¾ cup all purpose flour
- 1 ½ cups rolled oats
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon fine table salt
- 2 teaspoons cornstarch
- 1 cup raisins, soaked in 3 tablespoons of dark rum
DIRECTIONS
- Mix together the flour, oats, cinnamon, baking
soda, salt and cornstarch and set aside.
- Cream together butter and sugars for 5 minutes
until soft and light. Add in egg and molasses and
beat until well combined.
- Add in the flour-oats mixture and stir until well
mixed. Stir in the raisins. Cover the bowl and r
efrigerate for 1 hour.
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and line 2
baking sheets with parchment paper.
- Scoop some of the dough a little at a time, roll
into a ball and press gently between the palm of
your hands and assemble on cookie sheets – 8/9
on each sheet.
- Bakes for 15 minutes, remove from oven and rest
in pan for 5 minutes then transfer to a wire rack
to cool completely. Serve warm or at room
temperature.
NOTES
- If you like, use all brown sugar.
- For the raisins to fully absorb the rum let them
soak at room temperature for at least 1 hour. You
can certainly set this overnight to use the
following day.
- I highly recommend baking 1 tray at a time,
however, if you are planning to bake both trays
at the same time, switch the pans half way
through baking for even cooking.
- If you are baking 1 pan at a time, put back the
mixture in the refrigerator and roll out the
cookies just before putting them in the oven.
