Oh My Stinkin Delicious
Ok, I have to share this because I am dying in oatmeal cookie heaven over here. After many disappointing oatmeal cookie recipes and hours of reading later I have finally found the perfect oatmeal cookie recipe for my family. I looked at a ton of recipes online and combined a few of them for a great combination. The cookies are crisp on the outside and chewy on the inside. They keep their shape and best of all they are SOOOOOO Good!The secret is the raisins. You have to soak them. I don’t even like raisins. In fact, I typically really DISLIKE raisins. But I decided to brave it and I can’t believe how good they are! You have to try it with the raisins (even if you normally hate them, you’ll see). I added chocolate chips to ours but they are totally not necessary. We had to omit the nuts because of nut allergies in our house but they would rock with some chopped pecans or walnuts. These cookies make your house smell soooo good.
Recipe:
1 cup butter, room temp
1 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup white sugar
2 eggs, well beaten
1 TBSP (yes tablespoon) vanilla
1 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cinammon
1/2 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp nutmeg
3 cups oatmeal (quick cooking or old fashioned, not instant)
1 cup raisins
1/2 cup chocolate chips (optional)
1/2 cup chopped nuts (optional)
To prep: The key is to soak the raisins. This makes all the difference in the world. Beat eggs and vanilla together and then add the raisins, stir. Soak for an hour or two. I just walked by a few times and stirred it while I waited.
Directions:
Preheat to 350 F
Cream butter and sugars with mixer. In a seperate bowl combine flour, salt, baking soda, cinammon, ginger & nutmeg. Stir the dry ingredients until well blended. Add dry ingredients to creamed mixture and mix well. Now add in the egg & raisin mixture (I used my hands). Then add oatmeal and chocolate chips/nuts and combine well. Form into balls on cookie sheet. Bake 10 minutes. Let cool on cookie sheet for 2-5 minutes or until firm enough to transfer to wire rack.
Made about 2 1/2 dozen cookies for me and I made them pretty big. You could get 4 dozen if you make them small.
Like you, I too was unhappy with every oatmeal cookie recipe I have tried. Today I googled “best oatmeal cookie” and found your recipe. Soaking the raisins in the eggs and vanilla intrigued me so I tried the recipe. Amazing! So delicious! The only thing I changed was I used 1/2 cup of butter and 1/2 cup of vegetable shortening (I was low on butter) and I did not put in the nuts as my teen does not care of nuts in cookies. So wonderful. This will be my oatmeal cookie recipe of choice from this day forward. Thanks for sharing.
Very good recipe. The first time I made the cookies I made it as is except I replaced the flour with whole wheat flour. The best oatmeal cookies I have ever made.
For those interested in a healthier version today I tried the following:
1) Use 1-2 tablespoons of butter instead of a full cup.
2) Replace the rest of the butter with applesauce (I used home made apple sauce from 4 small apples).
3) Use half of the sugar and brown sugar.
This version comes out pretty decent for how healthy the cookie is and cuts out a ton of saturated fat and sugar.
Oatmeal raisin happen to be my husband’s favorite and these are delicious! Kept their shape beautifully! (I use the small melon scooper and get a nice consistent size each time) Didn’t have any ginger so substitued ground nutmeg (1 1/4t because I love it!)and it worked out very well. Walnuts are my nuts of choice for these. I think later I may try them with some flaked coconut!
Whatever the combination these would be excellent cookies each and every time and you’re absolutely right – soaking the raisins is the trick, especially in 1T of vanilla!
Thanks so much for sharing what my most favorite aunt would have called “a keeper!”
Pat
This IS the BEST oatmeal cookie EVER!!!! My husband doesn’t like oatmeal cookies. He lovessss these!!! I will NEVER make another kind of oatmeal cookie. THIS IS THE ONE AND ONLY for me from now on!
I am totally excited to try these … tomorrow!!!
I LOVE to get new receipts, and this one sounds GREAT!
Laurel :)
PS: I’m enjoying your blog.
Yeah, oatmeal cookies are pretty tricky. If you leave them too long in the baking sheets, they get all crunchy you cannot lift them out without breaking them into pieces. Found a technique, though. Instead of directly putting the oatmeal dough directly on the baking trays I lined them with wax paper so it was easy to lift and peel off the cookies. Would you have a better idea on how to remove these cookies without deforming or breaking them? Or perhaps this recipe of yours will work and . . . MAGIC!. . . My cookies won’t break.
Coming from a person who makes 8-10 dz cookies at a time…the best way to bake your cookies on a baking sheet is on parchment paper. You find it near the wax paper. This allows you to pull them right off the sheet and onto the table or counter to cool without them braking or sticking to the sheet. I use air bake sheets that dont have a lip, so they slide right off. Magic! Have fun!!
These Cookies were incredible! Honestly, the best oatmeal cookie I have ever tasted. I couldn’t stop eating them. Thank you so much for sharing! This will be go to for now on!
I am excited I found your recipe! I have the raisins soaking now. My BF is thrilled that I can add chocolate chips.
These are the best oatmeal cookies ever – 100%! My mom found your recipe – and shared it with me. It is now a favorite of the entire family. We have linked it on our website under our favorites, hope you don’t mind. We often add 1/4 cup of dried cranberries to the recipe – Just delicious! Thanks for the recipe.
These cookies do live up to their name! So good! Only thing was my kids couldn’t wait for the soaking that long so we only soaked for 20 minutes or so, basically while we mixed the other ingredients. Still great! I used about 1/2 raisins and 1/2 cranberries b/c I like the added tartness and I used walnuts because that’s the only nut we had. FABULOUS recipe! Thank you!
Okay, these cookies live up to the hype – they are freaking amazing! I agree – the soaking of the raisins adds a certain je nais sais quois. Thank you for sharing this recipe – it’s a keeper!
I made these cookies and used white chocolate and walnuts and dusted the tops very lightly with pink salt – AMAZING!!! I dare-say heavenly …
I stumbled across this recipe this afternoon. Just finished baking them and all I can say is that these are the best Oatmeal Cookies I’ve ever eaten!! Thanks for sharing the recipe
Made these cookies today – Wow, absolutely the best I’ve ever tasted. I also drizzled over the cookies some browned butter frosting that added a wonderful touch to them. Rich, but delicious!!!
I’m delighted that someone else has discovered the benefit of soaking raisins…I’ve done this for years because biting into a cookie with dried, hard fruit ruins an otherwise good cookie. My favorite version uses heated bourban or Southern Comfort to soak the raisins…heating the liquid really plumps up the raisins, keeping them moist and tender, and with chunks of toasted pecans added, these are sooo good….they just disappear!
OK, I am trying these in a couple of hours. I only have golden raisins and I am hoping these will work. Has anyone out there tried these? They are sweeter then dark raisins. I’ll let you know how they turn out.
Cheri,
How did the golden raisins work for you? I’ve never tried them. Hope it turned out well!
Jessica
The golden raisins turned out great. They disappear in the cookie itself and the flavor is milder and sweeter. I tried chocolate chips as well but will leave them out the nexst time.
WOW, best oatmeal cookie recipe I’ve tried hands down…and I’ve tried a TON. Thank you for the wonderful recipe!
I put the raisins in a little water in a small sauce pan and simmer them for a few minutes to plump them. Then add the raisins to the dough. The raisin liquid can be part of the liquids added to the dough. That will cut the waiting time for the dough much shorter and the raisins are tastier.
Please have your recipes printer friendly, thanks.
Well, it’s October of 2009 and these are, indeed, the best I’ve ever baked. Now if only someone would stop me from eating them all. Great recipe. Many thanks.
Uncle Sal
A friend recommended these today on FB, had all the ingredients except the ginger so had to give them a try! My 3 year old helped me and it was a great afternoon together. Now we are having an afternoon cuppa and these go down a treat. I did find that I needed to bake them a little longer than 10 minutes as the first batch were still really wet in the middle.
Thanks from Singapore
I made these cookies this morning- lives up to the hype!!! VERY good, I think I had three or four for breakfast :) I don’t know if anyone else ran into this, but I had to bake these WAAAAAAY longer than 10 minutes per batch- I think I actually left them in the oven for over 20 minutes, and they still came out nice and chewy. Thanks for the recipe, my coworkers made me promise to whip these up again.
they are soooo good that I passed out a dozen to clients and they agree that they are the best recipe ever. One thing that I added (i started this years ago) is to referigrate the dough for 20 minutes before shaping and putting them on a cookie sheet to bake.
I agree that soaked raisin make all the differnece. I soak mine in a small amount of very warm alcohol for ten to twenty minutes and then use the alcohol in the recipe. Rum works well.
I just made them – all was great except that I thought it was way too sweet. So next time, I’ll cut down on the sugar.
Thanx!
Great recipe! I am going to try the applesauce and 1/2 sugar to make them a wee bit healthier though ;)
Wow! These were some tasty cookies!! However I agree that they were a tad too sweet. Think I’ll have the sugar the next time.
We often half the sugar in cookie recipes too (including this one) and usually don’t miss it much. Sometimes I just eliminate all of the cane sugar and just use brown sugar. Ironically the sugar content in the recipe above is reduced from the amount called for in the recipes I adapted this one from. It called for 1 cup of each.
Also, for those who can not use eggs you can replace the eggs in this recipe with 1/4 cup of applesauce or fruit puree for each egg plus 1/2 tsp baking powder. Mashed banana works well too.
I am making the cookies tonight -and will freeze and ship to son in Afghanistan. Thanks for all the previous comments – glad to have your ideas.
Best oatmeal cookies with a twist. I combined your recipe with my grandmothers. Instead of soaking the raisins, I put them in about 1/2 c water and brought them to a boil then turned off burner. let them sit to cool while creaming butter, sugar and eggs and measuring dry ingredients. Drain off water but keep to add a little later. Raisins are plump in just a few seconds, instead of waiting for an hour or two and the raisin juice (about 1/4 c or less) can be added at the end after adding dry ingredients. Makes dough more moist, and cookies are very moist and have more raisin flavor.
Everyone raved about these. I like the nutmeg and ginger taste in them.
Thanks
Pat