I joked to my fiancé that I kind of feel like a dog when I eat these cookies. (I seriously missed my calling as a saleswoman, as you can tell.) They just have that super satisfying mouth-feel that makes you want to gnaw at them slowly and savor that oatmeal flavor.
Making them was fairly standard. Sift the dry ingredients, cream the wet ingredients, and then combine the two together. I attempted to fold the dry ingredients into the wet to keep the cookies soft and prevent gluten strands from forming, but the dough became fairly dry. Mixing in the oatmeal made it near impossible, so I gave up a stirred as little as I could. The dough itself had 3 cups of oatmeal, which I thought was a huge amount. It was slightly difficult to form the cookies into balls with the oatmeal working against you, but it was worth the effort. It doesn't stick to your hands that much, so it's fairly easy to work with. And after 13 minutes, you have warm, delicious oatmeal raisin cookies. =)
Adjustments / Substitutions
I only had 4/5 cup of white flour, and the recipe called for 2 cups. I had plenty of whole wheat flour, so I looked into the substitutions. Some websites claim that you can substitute whole wheat flour for white flour one to one. Others claim that the substitution should be closer to 3:4 or 1:2.
Since whole wheat flour is made of the entire wheat grain (bran, germ, and endosperm), it is denser than all-purpose white flour, which is only made of the endosperm. Therefore, if you substitute 1:1, anything you bake will be denser than if you had used white flour, which is often not desired.
A cup of white flour weighs 7 oz, so I decided to use all the white flour I did have, and then add whole wheat flour until I hit my original target of 14 oz. Overall, I think this worked really well, and the cookies did not come out dense.
Second, I substituted shortening for the butter. In my experience, butter makes cookies spread out thin and flat, and I wanted the oatmeal and raisins to provided the chewiness and keep the dough lighter. I think this made the cookies taste a bit sweeter than intended.
Next Time
I would love to make this again and continue to play with the recipe. I would like to see how it was originally intended, and if using butter would significantly impact the taste. I further want to research how butter vs shortening affects the creaming process. So much to learn!
