These Oatmeal Raisin Cranberry cookies are slightly crispy at the edges, chewy in the middle and full of raisins, cranberries, and cinnamon.
When driving home from work one day, I listened to the Faith Middleton Food Schmooze Podcast which featured Brian Noyes who opened the Red Truck Bakery in Virginia in 2009. The podcast covered his career and how he went from the art director at The Washington Post to owning his own bakery, writing a cookbook, and selling pies all over the country. He even caught the attention of President Obama when he mailed him one of his signature pies. Obama wrote him back noting how much he loved the pie.
This is my take on Brian Noyes’s Oatmeal Cranberry Cookies. They are chewy and very slightly crispy and last several days. They have quite a bit less sugar and butter than a typical cookie, which I suppose you can argue makes them healthier. Though I’m not sure you can argue that they are healthy.
The ingredients don't not vary much from the original recipe, but I changed the approach by dumping most of the dry ingredients in at once after mixing the wet ingredients, then stirring by hand, and extending the baking time. I find it generally unnecessary to mix the dry ingredients together separately. It takes extra time and it’s an extra bowl to wash. For cookies, in most cases, it doesn’t make enough of a difference. Just dump they dry ingredients all in at the end and save some time and dishwashing. I also like to mix in the dry ingredients by hand, partially because I like the repetition/meditation of it, and it helps prevents over mixing and extra air from being whipped into the dough, but you can use a mixer and mix until just incorporated.
Oatmeal Raisin Cranberry Cookie Notes:
- It's important to buy high quality cinnamon. I buy organic ceylon cinnamon from Whole Foods.
- After rolling the cookies into balls and placing them on the cookie sheet, flatten them slightly. This helps the cookies to spread out, rather than poof up, which gives you that crispy edge and chewy center.
- Many cookie recipes will call for about 1 ½ cups sugar. This recipe uses half of that, though of course there's sugar in the raisins and cranberries. However, they do taste a little less sweet than standard cookies, so much so that I'm often tempted to eat them as a mid morning snack, or a run-out-the-door grab for breakfast.
Oatmeal Raisin Cranberry Cookies
Ingredients
- 6 tbsp butter, softened
- ¼ cup dark brown sugar
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- 2 eggs
- ½ tsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 2 cups rolled oats
- ¾ cup all purpose flour
- ¼ tsp baking powder
- ¼ tsp baking soda
- ½ tsp salt
- ½ cup raisins
- ½ cup dried cranberries
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F.
- In a large bowl with a mixer cream together the butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar, until light and fluffy.
- Add the eggs, cinnamon, and vanilla and mix until combined.
- Add the oats, flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, raisins and cranberries and combine with a large spoon.
- Roll large spoonfuls of dough, about 2 tbsps, into balls and place them on a baking sheet. I use two spoons to shape the dough into balls. Then flatten slightly. You can fit about 9 cookies on a baking sheet.
- Bake for 14-15 minutes.
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