Soft Baked Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

I'm pretty sure most of us that bake have encountered cookies that turn out too hard or too crispy. I find this to be especially true whenever I bake a chocolate chip or an oatmeal raisin cookies. In my mind, both of these cookies are better when they're chewy and soft, but a majority of the recipes I've made have been crunchy. Thank goodness for Smitten Kitchen and her very heavily tweaked version of the Quaker Oats recipe. I've finally found an oatmeal raisin cookie that has lots of oats, lots of raisins, and is soft baked!

Making these is really simple and the result is just what I was hoping for. The dough gets chilled (apparently this is one of the tricks to getting thick, soft baked cookies), so you can make the dough a day ahead of when you need it, or just an hour or so before. I ended up freezing half of the rolled out cookies since I knew having two dozen delicious cookies in the house would become a problem (I have no self control when it comes to certain foods).

Recipe from Smitten Kitchen
Makes about 24 to 26 cookies

1 stick (1/2 cup, 113 grams) butter, softened
2/3 cup light brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cup rolled oats
3/4 cup raisins
1/2 cup walnuts (optional)

To soften the butter, either let it sit out to room temperature, or melt it and allow it to cool. Cream together the butter, sugar, egg and vanilla. Mix until smooth. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Stir this into the butter mixture. Mix in the oats and raisins (and walnuts if you want to use them).

Allow the dough to chill in your fridge. If you're going to freeze the dough. Roll it out into rounded tablespoon sized balls and freeze.

Preheat oven to 350°F/175°C. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Remove the dough from fridge and begin rolling out rounded tablespoon sized balls of dough. Space about 1 1/2 to 2 inches apart. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, until the outer edge of the cookies look slightly golden and the middle looks under baked. Let them cool on the baking sheet for a bit before moving them (they are likely to break apart of you move them too soon).

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