Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

Again, I'm making cookies. It's just it's so rainy where I am that I'm just in to cookie making mood. So, deciding on a recipe was an interesting process. For instance, I first thought I would use the recipe on the inside of the oatmeal carton. Then I saw that it wanted 3 cups of oatmeal (and I didn't have 3 cups of oatmeal), so I looked for another. I found a number of recipes that resulted in crisp oatmeal raisin cookies. Who wants a crisp oatmeal raisin cookie? They're supposed to be chewy. But then I finally found what I was looking for in the good old Fannie Farmer Cookbook.

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Cape Cod Oatmeal Cookies

1.5 cups flour

.5 tsp baking soda

1tsp cinnamon

.5 tsp salt

1 egg, lightly beaten

1 cup sugar

.5 cup melted butter/shortening

1 Tbsp molasses

.25 cup milk

1.75 cups oatmeal

.5 cup of raisins

.5 cup chopped nuts

Preheat the ovent to 350 F. Mix the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt together in a large bowl. Stir the remaining ingredients. Arrange by teaspoonfuls on unbuttered cookie sheets and bake until the edges are brown, about 10-12 minutes.

Don't you just love a cookie recipe that simple? I, however, made some little changes, just for my taste. I didn't put any nuts in, because I don't like nuts in my oatmeal raisin cookies. I also added 1tsp vanilla extract, .5(ish)tsp almond extract, .25 tsp allspice, and a small pinch of gound cloves. I tend to do this a lot because I love messing around with spices.

So, similar to last time, the weather is dark and cloudy and rainy (again! It is raining too much for it to be summer). But today I didn't go for chill music, I went for more dreamy music. So I chose School of Seven Bells, and shuffled through their music for a bit, then Wired for Light instantly triggered a connection to Electric Bloom (R Ingall Remix), so I listened to some Foals remixes, then moved on to Foals themselves on their Myspace page.

Baking Playlist:

Half Asleep - School of Seven Bells

Connjur - School of Seven Bells

Chain - School of Seven Bells

Prince of Peace - School of Seven Bells

Wired for Light - School of Seven Bells

Electric Bloom (R Ingall Remix)

Gold Gold Gold - Foals

Red Sox Pugie - Foals

Olympic Airways - Foals

Glaciers - Foals

Post Baking Analysis:

I was looking for chewy, and I got deliciously chewy cookies. Slightly crisp edges surrounding chewy (but not gooey) centers. I love oatmeal raising cookies.

Jam Thumbprint Cookies

So today I decided to make cookies (I had been thinking of making some sort of berry-y custard, but the I realizes 1) the recipe I was going to use wasn't as light as I thought it was, and 2) I didn't have half the ingredients, and I didn't feel like going to get them. So I decided cookies would have to be a good substitute). Cookies are some of my favorite things to make, because they are easy to distribute, and that makes my life better because 1) I get to spread the tasty goodness around, and 2) I don't end up eating all of the cookies by myself. Usually when I decide to make cookies, I just end up making chocolate chip cookies , I just end up making chocolate chip cookies, from the recipe off the back of the bag of chocolate chips. But, as it's summer, I wanted to do something a little fresher and more summery than chocolate chip cookies (I always associate chocolate chip cookies with fall for some reason). And I wanted to incorporate fruit in some way, so I decided on jam thumbprint cookies.

So after looking online for a recipe that didn't sound bogus, I found one on Food Network.com (hooray food television!)

Recipe by Ina Garten (Barefoot Contessa)

3/4 pound (3 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water, for egg wash

7 ounces sweetened flaked coconut

Raspberry and/or apricot jam

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

In an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together the butter and sugar until they are just combined and then add the vanilla. Separately, sift together the flour and salt. With the mixer on low speed, add the flour mixture to the creamed butter and sugar. Mix until the dough starts to come together. Dump on a floured board and roll together into a flat disk. Wrap in plastic and chill for 30 minutes.

Roll the dough into 1 1/4-inch balls. (If you have a scale they should each weigh 1 ounce.) Dip each ball into the egg wash and then roll it in coconut. Place the balls on an ungreased cookie sheet and press a light indentation into the top of each with your finger. Drop 1/4 teaspoon of jam into each indentation. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until the coconut is a golden brown. Cool and serve.

I decided to skip out on the coconut, simply because I didn't feel like putting coconut on my jammy cookies. I also just used whatever jam I had in my fridge that needed using (I actually mixed two kinds together, "fruits of the forest" and raspberry, because they were both open).

While making these cookies, I wanted my music to match my mood. While making the dough, it was kind of cloudy and dark, and that always makes me want to listen to relaxing music, so I put on Enya, then got bored of that so I changed over to Fleet Foxes. But after the dough had cooled off in the fridge, it had gotten lighter, and I wanted more upbeat music, do I chose Ratatat, which ended up being a good choice, because I found myself, while rolling out the cookies in my hands, falling into the rhythm of the music, which made my cookie formation go much more smoothly.

Songs Played:

Boadicea - Enya

Tiger Peasant Mountain Song - Fleet Foxes

He Doesn't Know Why - Fleet Foxes

Quiet Houses - Fleet Foxes

Sun It Rises - Fleet Foxes

Seventeen Years - Ratatat

Loud Pipes - Ratatat

Everest - Ratatat

Cherry - Ratatat

(I "choose" what songs I listen to by plugging my ipod into my speakers, going to the artist I've chosen, then shuffling through their songs).

Post-baking update:

After some worrying about being able to tell when the cookies where done, I apparently (luckily) took them out at the right time (hooray). If you do it right, they are very tasty (little shortbready, sugary, buttery cookies with a little dollop of jam in the middle, just enough to sweeten it up a little).

Food and Music Combine

So I really didn't know where I was going with this blog. I started it on a whim (mainly because of my "hypocrisy" thing), but now that I've started, I feel like I should continue with it. However, I didn't really know what to say. That is, until I thought of what it is that I like to do, which is cook and listen to music. So I think that I'm going to try to combine those two into some sort of interesting thing for all the internet to see. Now we just have to wait and see how it turns out.