Oatmeal Cookies ("The Best")

Like most enthusiastic home cooks, Terry Kropp of Burlington, Wisconsin has a long list of favorite recipes. She says the oatmeal cookies from the “Clam Lake” community cookbook that her husband’s Aunt Betty gave her in 1983 are “addictive,” and after baking a batch, I can see why.

Oatmeal cookies, according to “The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion”(The Countryman Press, $29.95), are the perennial runner-up to chocolate chip cookies in virtually any list of all-American favorites.

“When you think comfort food cookies,” the editors write, “and you can get your mind beyond the allure of the chocolate chip, it’s oatmeal cookies-warm and chewy, studded with raisins and nuts-that come to mind.”

Oats have a long history in baking, especially in Scotland, where flat oatcakes (bannocks) have been part of the traditional diet for centuries.  The oatmeal cookie, as it turns out, became part of the American mainstream after the founding of the Quaker Oats Company, which resulted from a merger of three regional companies at the turn of the nineteenth century.

Thanks to the company’s nationwide marketing campaigns, Americans began to use oats as an ingredient in recipes for meatloaf, breads, muffins, and-of course- cookies, of which there are endless versions. The “Cookie Companion” lists nine recipes, in addition to eight variations for the “soft” version.

Like Terry’s favorite, several of the “Companion’s” recipes are made with  raisins, nuts and a mix of white and brown sugar. What none of the other recipes I checked do, however, is macerate the raisins in a mix of beaten eggs and vanilla. It’s a tweak that definitely sets the recipe apart.

Clam Lake, by the way, is a small, 1338-acre lake in the 860,000-acre Chequamegon Forest in northern Wisconsin. The actual town of Clam Lake, which is unincorporated, is considered a “census-designated place” in the town of Gordon, which -in turn- is in Ashland County.

Oatmeal Cookies (“The Best”)

3 eggs, well beaten

1 cup raisin

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup butter

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup white sugar

2 1/2 cups flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

2 teaspoons baking soda

2 cups oatmeal

3/4 cup chopped pecans

Combine eggs, raisins, and vanilla and let stand for 1 hour, covered with plastic wrap. Cream together butter and sugars. Add flour, salt, cinnamon, and soda to sugar mixture. Mix well. Blend in egg-raisin mixture, oatmeal and chopped nuts. Dough will be still. Drop by heaping teaspoon onto ungreased cookie sheet or roll into small balls and flatten slightly on cookie sheet. Bake at 350-degrees for 10-12 minutes or until lightly browned.

Recipe donated by Lea Justice.

Note: I made the cookies slightly larger, cooked them a smidge longer (not much), and covered the baking sheets with parchment paper. Once the cookies are baked, let them sit for a few minutes before taking them off the baking sheets and placing them on racks to cool. The recipe makes 5-6 dozen cookies, depending on the size of the cookie.

Terry says that when one of her now-grown sons took the cookies to share with his class, the teacher liked them so much that she asked for the recipe. No surprise there.