I love oatmeal raisin cookies, so any spin on them is a good sign in my book. I found some local walnuts at The Root Cellar over the weekend - some of them I used for pumpkin-walnut bread for Thanksgiving - but I wanted to highlight them in something else. I must say, these are excellent. From what I could gather, they were also the favorite at work as well. The walnuts were so flavorful, soft, and provided a creamy and buttery flavor that complemented the sweet and tart dried cranberries really well. These go wonderfully with tea and make a pretty dang good breakfast too, if I might say.
I modified this recipe from here.
The local booty legend (aka revealing my sources):
no asterisk = grocery store
+ = local produce from The Root Cellar
++ = The Peace Nook (will denote whether product is local or just from the Nook)
* = farmer's market
** = CSA
*** = Container or Community Garden
**** = the non-profit buying club, Blue Planet or Purcell Mountain Farms
Whole Grain Spelt Cranberry Walnut Oatmeal Cookies
Makes 16 cookies
6 tbsp Earth Balance
6 tbsp organic raw sugar
6 tbsp packed brown sugar
1 egg or egg replacer ++
1 tbsp pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup whole grain spelt flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp salt
1 cup + 6 tbsp regular rolled oats
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup walnuts, chopped +
Preheat oven to 375.
Combine Earth Balance, sugar, egg, and vanilla with an electric mixer.
Slowly add the remaining ingredients except cranberries and walnuts.
Once well combined, stir in cranberries and walnuts.
Drop by rounded tablespoons a few inches apart on a cookie sheet.
Bake 10-12 minutes or until golden brown.
Let cool about 5 minutes and transfer to a wire cooling rack.
Yummy!
'Til next time!
9 comments:
Woman! You are a baking fool! I thought you said you weren't all that great at baking? Sure looks yummy to me! :)
I just finished baking all our holiday cookies and there are all snug in the freezer until we distribute them next week. I didn't go vegan since I was planning on giving them all away. I still ended up licking beaters and now I have a tummy ache. Ugh. Ok. So next year maybe we'll go the vegan route.Now I know where to get the recipes :)
i thinking you need to send me a care package of cookies! :)
Saving walnuts for Thanksgiving? That was last week...are you celebrating later? Am I in a time warp? :-)
These cookies sound great. I love how oatmeal makes cookies all chewy...
These look great! They look kind of chewy...are they? I love chewy cookies!
How are you feeling? I hope that you are starting to feel better!
Courtney
while i do enjoy chocolate, i don't like it much in my cookies. dan makes fun of me 'cause i make chocolate chip cookies, but without the chocolate chips. mmmmmmm! i sub walnuts instead. your cookies sound excellent, Jennifer! and they look super scrumptious, too! walnuts + oatmeal + cranberries = hells yeah! that's one tasty combination! yummah!
Heather - Can you believe I made all these cookies in one day? I must be crazy! I am taking a break from testing things for the holiday gift baskets this weekend as I want to make some more "involved" meals. Wahoo.
I'm really not all that good at baking, I have more failures than successes.
Next year I will plan ahead a little better to do that. At this point, I've just decided to take off most of the week of Christmas so I can be in a baking frenzy before we head out of town.
Egg replacer works really well and there are all sorts of alternatives to dairy and other animal products out there - granted, some of them are a little less sustainable than others, but when it comes to your health, I think you can make concessions. This is why I still buy hempmilk even though it is shipped from who knows where and is in TetraPak, I lived a very stuffy and congested life when I was consuming dairy.
Selina - You know, that isn't a half bad idea. Perhaps after the baking frenzy of Christmas we could seriously consider doing something like that. I have a few other Missouri produced goods you might like to have. Email me sometime after Christmas if you are interested in doing that.
Bianca - I think it is me who was in a time warp - hahaha. I wrote these posts and scheduled them all to publish before we went out of town for Thanksgiving. I guess I didn't think about the fact that these would be posted after the fact and that it might not entirely make sense. ;-) I've fixed it now though.
Me too!
Courtney - They were chewy, perfectly, delightfully chewy! Can you tell I like oatmeal cookies?
Aw, thank you so much for asking. I am feeling quite a bit better. My fever is gone, I'm not all achy and fatigued anymore, I am still fighting off a lingering cough, but aside from that, both Brett and I are feeling so much better.
Jessy - Hahaha, chocolate chip cookies without the chocolate? That is too funny! I bet they would be really good with walnuts though, great idea.
I love the combination, they are perfectly spiced, and oh so tasty. I wish I still had some of these around. My co-workers went to town on the cookies I brought in.
Oooh, I think subbing out the raisins for cranberries was definitely a good move. Wish I had some of those right now!
Oh, yum! I love to use spelt flour these days, and this sounds like such a good recipe. And as not much of a cookie person, it still sounds like something I'd like... do you think the basic batter would work in a loaf too?
I'm jealous of your local nuts, those are hard to find here in Connecticut it seems, and often don't make it to my local table.... :-(
T - I loved the idea of just a slight change-up for an oatmeal cookie. Nothing too out there, but the difference in flavor using spelt flour and cranberries instead of raisins makes it feel like a whole new cookie. I wish I had one too!
Living In A Local Zone - They were! I do too. I had actually never heard of it until someone who comments on this blog suggested it to me. It is carried in the bulk section of one of the "regular" grocery stores near us, so I tried it out and am sold!
I'm not sure if it would work in a loaf, but I bet it wouldn't hurt to try. I love the idea of an oatmeal cranberry bread, that would be amazing. What a great breakfast! You'll have to let us know if you try that out.
Local nuts didn't do too well this year here, we usually have a little bit more of an abundance than we've had. I've still been able to get local pecans, walnuts, and chestnuts. The pecans was a one time deal on the last weekend that the farmer's market was around, and the walnuts appear to be going pretty quickly.
That is too bad about not being able to get local nuts. I wish we had more of a variety, but I realize we are lucky to have what we do!
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