Oatmeal Raisin Cookies for 3 years of Blogging !

My little space turns 3 today! Time flies, I must say. I still remember, 3 years back, one fine day I put across the thought to Jacob, of starting a blog. And his 'Yes' was so strong that it started. But I never thought it would come this far with me (the lazy one being the author of it :) ). And all thanks to all my supporters and my blogger friends who kept the fire in me on, to keep it going.

This blog was a start to engage myself during my free time. Now 3 years down the line, I guess, it has somehow become my identity; a part of me. If you are a blogger, you would know the feeling of you being addressed/introduced as the author of your blog in a gathering. It is such a joy to be doing something out of the usual stuff and I hope I can squeeze in some time to my little space in the coming years too. Its a tradition to distribute sweets as you go along spreading the good news and so I thought cookies would be the right fit for today's occassion, even though the post is about an year old.. he he...So lets talk more about these cookies now.

While I was preggy, I tried to eat healthy snacks other than stuff myself with some junk and fried stuff. Every other person I met, used to recommend me, to have oats. I had always hated oatmeal, but I was so determined to try having it. I got a big can of oatmeal (bad idea). But the very first attempt of having it made me sick. 

Since then, the oatmeal pack was pushed to a corner of the kitchen cabinet. It then came to light only after Jordan was out. I thought of trying it again. But nope I just didn't like it. 

I thought of giving it another form to make sure I don't waste it. And thanks to the recipe on the lid of the oatmeal pack that I got the idea to convert them into cookies. I had never thought of buying another pack of oats untill I ate these cookies. They were super yumm, filling and addictive. If you hate oats I would highly recommend you to try these cookies, they would make you fall in love with oats. This is the recipe to those addictive cookies.

For the ease of sharing/printing the recipes from Palaharam, I have installed the buttons(Facebook, G+, Twitter, Pinterest and Yummly) that would now float along with you. Be generous to share along the recipes you love :). Also, from now on, you could print the recipes and pin it on your kitchen board for quick check back while you cook :).

Ingredients

1. 1 cup of unsalted butter, softened
2. 1 cup of brown sugar
3. 1/4 cup of granulated sugar
4. 2 large eggs at room temperature
5. 1 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract
6. 1 tbsp of honey/maple syrup
7. 1 1/2 cups of all purpose flour
8. 1 tsp of baking soda
9. 1 tsp of cinnamon powder
10. 1/2 tsp of salt
11. 3 cups of old fashioned oats
12. 1 cup of raisins

Method

• In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter and sugar untill it turns smooth. Add the eggs, vanilla and honey/maple syrup. Beat it well untill everything gets combined well.
• In another bowl, mix the dry ingredients (7-10). Add it to the wet ingredients little by little untill everything gets combined together. Now add in the oats and raisins and fold in so that everything gets evenly distributed. The dough would be sticky.
• Refrigerate the dough for an hour.
• Preheat the oven to 350 F. 
• Roll out balls of dough(about 1 inch in diameter) and place them 2 inches apart on the baking sheets lined with parchment paper. Bake for about 10 minutes untill the sides turn brown in colour. The center portion of the cookie would look uncooked but they would continue to cook as you let these cookies stand for 5 minutes on the baking sheets,  before transferring them on to a wire rack. 
• Once they cool down, you could transfer them in to an air tight container and store it for about a week and a half.

Tips

1. Chilling the dough is an essential step in the preparation of the cookie. Do not skip it.
2. You could add walnuts or almonds to the cookie dough if you wish to.

Recipe courtesy : Adapted from the Quaker oats cookie recipe