Oatmeal Cookies II

These oatmeal cookies are exactly what comes to mind when somebody says oatmeal cookie. No molasses, no brown sugar, no special spices. Just shortening, sugar, eggs, oats, and the classic raisin-walnut combo that’s been showing up in lunchboxes for nearly a century.

The trick this recipe gets right is plumping the raisins. Cooking raisins briefly in water before draining and folding them in gives you soft, juicy bursts in the finished cookie instead of leathery little rocks. Skip this step at your peril. Dry raisins pull moisture from the dough and turn into something between resin and gravel by the second day.

Using shortening instead of butter changes the texture in important ways. Shortening doesn’t melt at body temperature, so the cookie holds its shape and stays soft for days longer than a butter cookie would. Old-school cookie tin friendly, in other words.

Drop the dough by spoonfuls without flattening. The cookies spread on their own at 375F (190C). Pressing them down before baking gives you flat thin disks instead of the cushiony rounds you want.

Pro Tips

• Use old-fashioned rolled oats rather than quick oats. Quick oats absorb moisture differently and produce a denser, less chewy cookie.
• Toast the walnuts in a dry skillet for 3 minutes before adding for deeper, nuttier flavor.
• Don’t overbake. Pull them when the edges are set but the centers still look slightly underdone. They finish on the hot pan.
• Store with a slice of bread in the container. The bread keeps the cookies soft for days.

Variations

• Swap raisins for dried cranberries or chopped dried apricots for a less sweet, more tart cookie.
• Add 6 ounces of chocolate chips along with the raisins for an oatmeal raisin chocolate chip mash-up.
• Replace half the white sugar with brown sugar for a deeper, butterscotchy flavor.