Wholewheat Oats Raisin Cookies

I can't say which i love better, baking cakes or baking cookies. Cookies are easier to bake, more difficult to get wrong and store for longer. So they are great for gifting. Cakes need a little more attention to pull them off correctly and so would have taken second place, except that i now have the cutest cake mould and i want to try out more varieties of cakes. This battle within me continues, while the winner may ultimately announce itself on the blog based on the number of blog posts dedicated to cookies and cakes. Today makes them even.

I have been eating all kinds of breakfast cereal including honey oat clusters but have stayed away from plain oats till now. So earlier this month i picked up my first bag of Quaker quick oats. The husband was wary of whether i can finish off a 1 kilo packet all by myself and proposed that i try out the 200 gram pack first. So i came home with the smaller pack of oats and in a couple of days decided to do the cookies. The Quaker oats website supposedly has the best oats cookie recipe. It was actually titled "Vanishing Oatmeal Raisin Cookies" and was reproduced in a few places on the Internet with rave reviews. Yes, this was the recipe i was going to use and I had fully intended to use this particular recipe as it is. But fate had other plans, I had to continue the legacy of never reproducing a recipe on the Internet as it is! 

I found that the 200gram pack has only a little over two cups of oats when the original recipe asked for three. Adjustments had to be made - scaling down the ingredients, using wholewheat flour instead of plain flour, making do with 100 grams of butter and substituting the remaining with oil. I got about 4 dozen bite sized cookies, the original recipe is supposed to yield 4 dozen normal sized cookies. Mom and dad liked the cookies, they were also shared with my in-laws, my aunt's family and my grandma. Oh, and i forced the husband to have one too (he stays away from cookies on general principle that cookies are for kids!). He liked it well enough to let me buy a 1 kilo pack of oats yesterday. You know you can go make them now.

Adapted from - Quaker Oats Website

Ingredients

100 grams salted butter, softened

3 tablespoons oil

3/4 cup sugar

2 eggs

1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence

1 cup whole wheat flour

2/3 teaspoon baking soda

2/3 teaspoon cinnamon powder

2 cups quick oats

2/3 cup raisins

Method

Preheat the oven to 350°F. In large bowl, beat butter, oil and sugar together until creamy. Add eggs and beat well after each addition. Stir in the vanilla. Combine the whole wheat flour, baking soda, and cinnamon powder in a separate bowl by mixing with a dry whisk. Add it to the butter mixture and stir gently. To this, add oats and raisins and mix well. Drop dough by rounded tablespoonfuls or using your fingers onto ungreased cookie sheets. Press the dough balls flat using the tines of a fork if you like thinner cookies, as the dough does not spread much during baking. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until golden brown. Cool for a couple of minutes on cookie sheets before removing to wire rack to cool completely. Store tightly covered. 

You can also substitute the  raisins with chocolate chips, if you prefer. Since this batch of cookies were for my parents, and not for kids, i did not succumb to the chocolate temptation.