Oh, the oatmeal cookie. What an inspired creation . . . a portable bite of bliss. There are very few things that can match the irresistible aroma of cookies baking. And somehow, no matter where you are, this aroma will find you. Homemade is always worth the effort — especially with cookies. I recommend that you bake these cookies one baking sheet at a time to make sure they cook evenly.
MAKES ABOUT 3 DOZEN COOKIES
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
½ cup whole wheat flour
2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats (not instant)
1¼ cups raw (turbinado) sugar
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon freshly grated ground nutmeg
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature plus ½ teaspoon for greasing
¼ cup whole milk
2 tablespoons molasses
1 large egg
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
¾ cup chopped walnuts
½ cup raisins
On your mark
Preheat the oven to 350°F with an oven rack in the middle slot of the oven.
Using a piece of wax paper, lightly grease two 10 ½ by 15 ½-inch cookie sheets with ½ teaspoon butter. Set aside.
Get set . . .
Combine the all-purpose and whole-wheat flours, oats, raw sugar, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt in a large bowl. Whisk until well mixed.
In a separate bowl, combine the butter, milk, molasses, egg, and vanilla.
Beat with an electric hand-mixer at medium speed until the mixture is smooth. Add to the dry ingredients. Toss all of the ingredients together to moisten.
Mix in the nuts and raisins.
Cook!
Scoop up about a tablespoon of dough and drop onto the greased cookie sheet. Repeat until you have 12 cookies about 2 inches apart.
Bake one sheet at a time on the middle rack of the oven for 18 minutes, or until the edges are crisp and start to color. Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for 10 minutes.
In the meantime, prepare and bake the next tray. Continue until all the cookies are baked.
Once the cookies have cooled for 10 minutes, use a spatula to lift them off the cookie sheet and place them on a rack to cool completely.
The above is an excerpt from the book Teen Cuisine by Matthew Locricchio. To buy the book for your teen, click on the title.
Locricchio was born into a restaurant and catering family and has worked in the food industry most of his life. Included in his resume as a professional cook are stints at the well-known Gandy Dancer in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the West Coast Stock Exchange’s private club in San Francisco, and the legendary Barbary Coast restaurant.
Matthew has taught culinary classes and given cooking demonstrations at culinary schools throughout the country as well as the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
James Peterson, photographer for Teen Cuisine, is a renowned cookbook author and photographer, and a James Beard and International Association of Culinary Professionals award winner.
For more information please visit Matthew’s website and follow him on Facebook and Twitter.
I made this recipe and followed instructions to the letter. It’s a great thick and chewy oatmeal raisin cookie. Just a few notes to the next baker who stumbles across this recipe and wants to try this too:
1) I’m a little wary of the instructions to mix the room temperature butter with the molasses, milk, egg, and vanilla. I think the room temperature butter really needs the sugar to agitate and break up the butter. I beat the mixture for a while and felt like I was just sloshing around curdled butter over and over. I finally gave up and added some of the turbinado sugar to get the liquids to mix with the butter.
2) The cookies aren’t quite as sweet as other oatmeal raisin cookies. I don’t have a huge sweet tooth and I still think these need some additional punch. For the next batch, I probably won’t be a turbinado purist and I’ll start experimenting with different ratios of brown and white sugar to get that kick.
3) If you want to have cookies that look like the picture, it’s definitely more than a tablespoon scoop – more like two tablespoons. I had to pat down my scoops so the cookies would spread like in the picture. The recipe still yields about 24 cookies with the two tablespoon size. And even with the larger cookies, the 18 minute baking time was spot on.
Hope this helps!