Starting Out on a Sweet Note, Oatmeal Cookies

Hello,

I decided to start this blog after many requests over the years from my family and friends to make certain dishes or for my recipes. I thought it would be nice to start out on a sweet note and make one of my favorite recipes ever. This is my Grandma's recipe for Oatmeal Cookies and its fabulous. Our family has always enjoyed it and it makes a TON! So, here we go!

You are going to want a big mixer. I wasn't kidding when I said this recipe makes a ton of cookies. Using a one-inch cookie scoop, I was able to scoop out 88 cookies. That's over 7 dozen! So if you have a big Kitchen Aid Mixer, this is the time to get it out.

Like most cookie recipes, it starts off by creaming the sugars with butter and then adding the eggs. I like to use butter-flavored shortening while making this recipe. Shortening gives you a softer cookie when baked where as butter gives you a crisp cookie. I perfer a soft cookie but want the taste of butter so by using the butter-flavored shortening I feel I get the best of both worlds!

After this, the rest of the ingredients are added including the oats. If you want just a plain oatmeal cookie, stop after the addition of the oats. But, if you want to go a little further..........

You can add 12oz of anything you would like! I usually add a 12oz bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips and it makes a wonderful oatmeal chocolate chip cookie. However, this time I just so happened to have some M&M's and pecans around. So I added about 9oz of M&M's and about 3oz of chopped pecans.

When you get all this throughly mixed, you can start scooping them out on a cookie sheet. I used a one-inch cookie scoop and placed them on a lightly greased cookie sheet.

Mine went into a 350 degree oven for 9 minutes. When they were done, I took them immediatly off the cookie sheet and onto a cooling rack and let the cookie sheet cool  before placing more dough on it.

As I mentioned earlier, I scooped 88 cookies out of this one batch of dough. But I only baked 32 cookies. The rest of the dough I scooped onto cookie sheets and put into the freezer for a while. Once my scooped dough was frozen, I dropped them into labled freezer bags and marked down the type of cookie and how many were in each bag. Now I can bake some fresh cookies whenever we get a craving for them!

Oatmeal Cookies

1 1/2 cups brown sugar

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 1/2 cups shortening

3 eggs

3 Tbsp water

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

2 1/4 cups all purpose flour

1 1/2 tsp baking soda

1 1/2 tsp salt

4 1/2 cups quick oats

12 oz chocolate chips, candy or nuts (optional)

Cream the sugars and the shortening together till light and fluffy and add eggs. Mix well and add water and vanilla. Mix the flour with the salt and baking soda and gradually add to wet mixture. Add the oats one cup at a time. Mix in chocolate, candy or nuts. It will be neccasary to scrape down the sides of the bowl several times with a rubber scraper to make sure dough is throughly mixed. Using a one-inch cookie scoop, scoop dough onto lightly greased cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes.

ENJOY!!