Michelle's Oatmeal-Cranberry Chocolate Chip Cookies

 

I’m probably typical among GenXers in learning to bake via the Toll House cookies recipe on the back of the harvest yellow package of Nestle semi-sweet chocolate chips. I have a vague memory of my mom and I in our kitchen that seemed tiny even to my six-year-old self, her showing me how to crack eggs, measure flour, and spatula the cookies off our blotchy brown cookie sheet. But as with so many things when it came to my mother, I was left to my own devices soon afterward. Which has given my kitchen practice a bit of a FAFO flavor—making it all the more fun. “There is no room for imagination in cookery,” says Anne Shirley in Anne of Green Gables. “You have to follow the rules…” Ah, but once you know the rules, oh the scope for the imagination! And an ineffable but relatively quick sense of satisfaction at creating something delicious and maybe even beautiful with your own two hands. 

This started as a basic oatmeal raisin cookie recipe from my old Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. But a little “what about this?” here and a little “how about that?” there ended with this recipe. I actually use 3/4c granulated sugar and a tablespoon of molasses so I don’t have to buy brown sugar. At Christmas I’ll add some mini white chocolate chips so that, with the cranberries and pistachios, it has a red, white, and green effect. And if I’m feeling cheeky, I’ll replace the spices with Persian rice seasoning (advieh-e polo) that I grind myself (though separately, of course, in one big batch to use multiple times). It gives the cookies this amazing depth of flavor. It’s maybe why, of all the kitchen goods I’m foisting on people, these cookies are often the baked good people remember most. 

Alas, the cookies pictured below, which I made to ensure the recipe works as written (as opposed to eyeballing it), may be missing 1/4 cup of flour as I was using my 1/4 measuring cup instead of a 1/2 cup. The dough was slightly thinner than usual and thus spread more than usual, making for flatter cookies. It’s quite likely I forgot to add the second 1/4 cup. Sequential tasking with ME/CFS brain fog can be a challenge. I suppose it makes every successful baked good a minor miracle.