Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies

These are normal, what you expect to get when you bake them yourself, adult-sized cookies. If a cookie recipe claims to yield 5 dozen cookies and the dough doesn’t fill half of your kitchen, you know they’re lying to you. Unless of course each cookie is paper thin and 1½ inches across! This recipe makes 2 dozen cookies that you’ll be proud to call homemade.

No cookie can be considered health-food, but when you make your own you skip all of the unnatural additives that allow those cookies at the grocery to sit on the shelves for weeks after traveling in the back of a truck from the cookie factory. Cookies, my friends, may seem innocuous, but have you read the labels on those packages?  Ugh, I’m guessing the “hollow tree” is an artificial one to boot!

Try a batch of these treats; it won’t take hours from your day and you can eat a cookie or two tonight and not feel guilty about it!


Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies 
Yield: 24 Cookies      Preparation Time: 15 Minutes      Cooking Time: 48 Minutes Total


Ingredients

• ¾ Cup Unsalted Butter (1½ sticks), at room temperature
• 1½ Cups Light Brown Sugar, packed
• 1 Teaspoon Baking Powder
• ¼ Teaspoon Baking Soda
• ¼ Teaspoon Kosher Salt
• 2 Large Eggs, at room temperature
• 1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
• 1½ Cups All-Purpose Flour
• 2 Cups Rolled Oats
• 1½ Cups Dried Cranberries


Preparation Steps

Step 1. Preheat oven to 375ºF

Step 2. Place the butter in the bowl of a stand mixer or a large mixing bowl and beat on medium-high speed for 30 seconds.

Step 3. Add the sugar and with the mixer on medium-low speed add the baking powder, baking soda and salt until completely incorporated.

Step 4. Stop the mixer, add the eggs and vanilla then slowly bring the mixer up to medium speed until the mixture is smooth.

Step 5. Add the flour ¼ cup at a time, slowly bringing the mixer up to medium-high speed until each addition is incorporated.

Step 6. Add the cranberries and mix on medium just until the fruit is spread evenly throughout the dough.

Step 7. Use your hands to roll the dough into golf ball size balls and place on a silicone mat lined baking sheet. Bake 6 cookies at a time on a standard half-size baking sheet (13” x 18”) for 12 minutes.

Allow the baked cookies to cool for 5 minutes in the pan before moving them to a cooling sheet or rack.


Tips and Trending

~ Take the butter out of the refrigerator the night before. The butter will be ready to use in the morning or even at night when you usually don’t bake cookies because you forgot to take the butter out of the fridge in time.

~ Using a stand mixer frees up both hands for adding ingredients and they also have the ability to power through cookie dough that will bog down a hand mixer. Don’t worry about not using a stand mixer often enough to justify owning one. We don’t buy cookies from the grocery store – they’re too small and full of too many artificial ingredients – I use my stand mixer to bake healthier.

~ Spread a large sheet of parchment paper on your counter and roll out all of the cookie balls at one time. You’ll be able to easily judge and adjust the size of each cookie and you get the really messy part done all at one time.

~ I use my insulated metal counter mats instead of racks to cool just baked cookies. They’ve got a smooth “diamond plate” surface that keeps the cookies flat but still allows some air to circulate under the cookies as they cool - and they easily wipe clean. You can buy them in most kitchen-wares departments or on Amazon.com.