Chocolate Chip / Oatmeal / Raisin or Cranberry Cookies

[Omegaman 3.0]

Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Raisin or Cranberry Cookies

Ingredients

• 2 c. all-purpose flour
• 1 c. quick or rolled oats (or granola type cereal is nice)
• 1 tsp, baking powder
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp, salt
• 2 ½ sticks (or 10 0z. or 20 tbsp.) of unsalted butter or margarine, room temperature
• 1 c. light brown sugar
• ½ c. granulated sugar
• 1 large egg, room temperature
• 1 large egg yolk, room temperature
• 1 tbsp. vanilla extract
• 1 ½ c. chocolate chips (white, milk, or semisweet)
• 1 ½ cups dried cranberries or raisins

 Directions

 Preheat the oven to 325°. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.

 In a medium bowl, mix the flour with the oats, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In a standing mixer fitted with the paddle, beat the butter or margarine and both sugars at medium speed until creamy. Add the egg followed by the egg yolk and vanilla, beating well between additions and scraping down the side of the bowl as necessary. Beat in the dry ingredients, then add the chocolate chips and cranberries or raisins and beat until thoroughly mixed.

 Spoon heaping teaspoons of the dough onto the baking sheets, 2 inches apart. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes, until the cookies begin to brown at the edges. Let the cookies cool on the baking sheets, then transfer them to a rack to cool completely.

Notes/Variations

Interesting variations are to add you favorite nuts in, or some cinnamon, or some orange zest, or substitute amaretto for the vanilla. Of course it does not need to be raisins or cranberries, other dried fruits work too.

You can also substitute various low cal or no cal sweeteners (which are suitable for cooking, not all of them are) to reduce the calories, but they will still not be no cal cookies!

Enjoy! - Omegaman

Edit: Adding some pictures, and when I am finished, I will say so at the end.

Above are some of the ingredients as I am making this today. Instead of brown sugar, I am using Swerve for the zero calories. Instead of granulated sugar, I am using Erythritol - 6% of the calories of sugar, 70% of the sweetness. I used whole wheat flour instead of all purpose, because it was what I had on hand. In my opinion, it was not the best choice, because I think it contributes to how stiff the dough was. That made it harder to spoon and form the little dabs of dough. On the other hand, it make cleaning the bowl easier, as it did not seem to stick to it, less gluten perhaps? I used extra-dark chocolate chips for most pf the chips, but there were not enough, so I used semi-sweet for the balance. I used Torani almond syrup in place of vanilla. The mix seemed dry, so I ended up doubling that (or maybe more, I did not measure it, I just guess-poured it out of the bottle. It still did not seem like enough, so I also ended up with two teaspoons of vanilla also!
In the red plastic bowl, you can see the granola I used. and clockwise from that are some raisins, papaya, pineapple, coconut, and seeds and nuts. Clockwise from those, are dried cranberries, then cashews, almonds, pecans, pistachios.
Of course you see in the bowl my whole egg plus on yolk. Finally in the picture is an aluminum foil box which contains the cooking goop that Crisco makes as a baking substitute for butter. It says it is butter flavored, but i could hardly detect a taste, not that much different than Crisco shortening to me.

Now, I am reasonably certain, that I took a picture of the goop mixed in my bowl, but if I did, it is probably on a different camera card that the one I have here with me now. I may add that later.

What I can say, is that I did not have the right attachments for my mixer, so mixing was slow! The stuff was quite stiff. the next pic I have, is some dough on a cookie sheet, using parchment paper. Now, in the recipe, I called for two cookie sheets. I put 18 blobs on each sheet.

Now as it turned out, there was more dough made than would make 36 cookies. So I decided to put some of the dough in an 8 x 8 inch Pyrex baking dish. I pit about 5/8 of an inch in, as that seemed about right by my intuition. Actually, that was not a great guess. I was counting on the dough to rise some. I did not think too long about it. If I were making cookies, I know that the dough would flatten out, it would spread  into circles, or at least that is what I would expect. I figured being captive in a dish it could not spread out, so it would just rise. As it turned out, it hardly rose at all! My theory is that with all of the nuts and fruits and chocolate, well those things son't change size or shape. Here is the dish or goo before being baked:

On second thought, seeing how shiny the chocolate chips are, maybe this is coming out of the oven!

Oh, I should have mentioned that I added cinnamon also, because I like the taste of cinnamon and chocolate together. However, apparently I did not use enough, I could not taste the cinnamon. Anyway . . . 

Here are the cookies in the oven:

Then last image, the cookie squares experiment. I cooked them an extra 10 minutes, because I though that glass pan would delay the heat getting to the center. Usually I would use the toothpick test, but a toothpick in this stuff, came out clean when the dough was raw. I peeked once in a whlle and the dough did not seem to be browning, nothing was sagging ow melting, it did not seem to be doing anything. After the extra 10 minutes though, I figured it had to be enough.

So three dozen cookies and sixteen squares later, I still had some dough left over. I formed it into a 6 inch diameter circle about a half an inch thick, and baked it on a piece of aluminum foil on a cookie sheet. I gave that to the neighbor who gave me the teaspoon of baking soda and baking powder that I did not have.
 All three of these variations came out the same. The were not as chewy as I would have preferred (except when they we still warm) but they we not overly hard and crunch either. As far as flavor . . .  to me there is no such things as bad tasting dark chocolate, so that part was fine. The dough part had a nice flavor, but could have been sweeter, probably would have been if I had used real sugars, instead of the zero calorie substitutes, but it was still good. I am not sure why I put the nuts in, usually I do not, as I do not think they enhance things, but I guess people like the crunch or something. Since I was making these to serve to my Bible study friends, I was trying to conform to what I knew of the tastes.
The mixture of dried fruits worked out well.

The final verdict Is that everyone liked them, but I have made better. I think they would have been better had I followed the recipe at the top without so many deviations. Nest time, I will try that.

[Alive]

Sounds good but how will they go with the pot of my world famous chili I have going?

[Omegaman 3.0]

1 hour ago, Alive said:

Sounds good but how will they go with the pot of my world famous chili I have going?

I do not know, but I bet it would be a good combo. I am about to make some of this stuff now, but will be trying some of the modifications I suggested, and set some of it aside and back in a glass pan to make some squares, I'll try to add some pictures if it goes well, and report back on how they came out. Will be serving these tomorrow at my Bible study, and see how they go over. Might go well with the book of Romans, as well as chili (or is it James tomorrow, I can't remember)!

 

[Omegaman 3.0]

OK,  yes, I think they would go well with chili. lol. However I did not try that, not being a huge chili fan, I rarely make it except to win chili contests. I did try them with various spice food (mostly Mecican variety) and they paired well with those.

I am making this post, just to draw attention to the fact, that I updated the first post.