I bought some red flame raisins in Palm Springs. They are twice the size of the ones you buy in the store. I thought they would make delicious oatmeal raisin cookies. That is my favorite cookie, and I could give some to Ida who watched our house, and Linda who lost her daughter.
First I had to make a pot of coffee. That actually went pretty well, only spilling a little of the grounds.
Then I got out the butter and brown sugar. I am using two different recipes. The Joy of Cooking, and the one on the lid of the box of oatmeal. I only spilled a teaspoon of the oatmeal on the floor opening the lid. Each recipe called for different amounts of sugar.
First the butter went into the Cuisinart. I had to cut it up in fourths since it was cold. Now my hands are buttery. The brown sugar was naturally lumpy, so I dug in and broke up the lumps. Then my hands were all sticky. I had to process it and naturally, because the butter was still hard, it didn’t mix evenly and I had to put in my hands again to mush it. Then I got to put in the eggs and vanilla. The vanilla we bought in Mexico, it must be fifteen years ago, and the cap was stuck tight. Good old boiling water trick fixed that. Now it processed much better.
Next I had to measure the flour and baking soda and powder. I didn’t add salt because I used salted butter instead of unsalted butter called for in the recipe. I’m not sure if that is enough salt or not. Probably should have put in more salt. Next I added the cinnamon and nutmeg. Both spices must be 20 years old, they even had lumps which I had to smush, adding flavor to my almost cookie dough fingers. Luckily I remembered to put the little cap with the small holes back on the cinnamon before capping it so the next person won’t have a ton of cinnamon when they wanted a sprinkle. Now the processing is harder. But the flour fit in there after all and I decided to take it out of the processor and put it in a bowl for the real work of adding all that oatmeal.
The stuff is now already as thick as peanut butter, but I have to add three and a half cups of oatmeal and a cup of those big raisins! What was I thinking? My shoulder and arm are still sore, but I think I got at least one raisin in each cookie, and obviously others with twenty. I actually did some more smushing. Now I officially had cookie dough gloves. I like big cookies with lots of raisins but the recipe called for the teaspoon dropped method to get more cookies that way. I compromised.
Now the oven has been at temperature for over an hour, so I finally put one batch of seven cookies in to bake for six to nine minutes. I had to turn the sheet in the middle. So do you turn it at 3 or 4½ minutes? They actually took ten minutes to bake. I am never sure when things are done anymore because my new oven doesn’t burn things. It doesn’t seem done if there isn’t a dark brown rim around the edges of cookies and doesn’t smell of burnt toast. But I did get a faint bit of brown on the bottom because I probably cooked them too long. I just can’t trust it being done if it’s not toasty brown, but they were. I didn’t cook my hands, but I would have had an extra cookie.
Dorothy Case 3/23/10
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