Cooking Up Your Own Food Magazine First on the Menu: Oldtime Oatmeal Cookies

I decided to start with a fairly easy recipe for our first cooking magazine. What I particularly love about my mother-in-law Kathy’s recipes are that they were written pre- Martha Stewart days. What I mean, is that they are the kind of recipes I grew up on myself—easy steps, common ingredients, and no worries of gluten-free this, or allergy free-that. Just simple, yummy goodness!

I followed this recipe nearly exactly, however I swapped out the raisins for dried cranberries — mostly because I prefer the taste cranberries over raisins, and I had just purchased a ginormous bag of Crasins at Costco that needed to get used up! I also added in the chocolate chips (white chocolate chips would taste great too).

This cookie dough freezes really well, so if you’re like me and only want to bake 1 dozen at a time, it’s super easy to freeze the remainder of the dough and enjoy later too. James’ favorite parts were sprinkling the cinnamon (he LOVES cinnamon) and sneaking tastes of the chocolate chips of course!

Oldtime Oatmeal Cookies

Yields 6 to 7 dozen cookies

2C seedless raisins (I used dried cranberries)

2C water

1½ C soft shortening

3C granulated sugar

4 eggs, medium sized

5C flour, unsifted

4C rolled oats

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp baking powder

2 tsp baking soda

2 tsp salt

2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp cloves

1C chopped walnuts (optional)

Heat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Place raisins in small glass or plastic bowl and cover with water. Microwave on high approximately 5 minutes, or until water comes to a full boil. Remove bowl from microwave, and let raisins steep until plump and water temperature lukewarm. Drain raisin liquid into measuring cup, if level of liquid does not reach one cup mark, add additional water to make one cup. Cream shortening, sugar, eggs and vanilla. Stir in raisin liquid. Blend in all dry ingredients, except oats. Mix well. Add raisins and beat batter until all raisins are well coated. Mix in oats, and nuts if desired, and beat well. Allow batter to rest while oven is heating. Drop batter into highly rounded mounds, using a ‘soup’ spoon, onto ungreased baking sheet.

Bake 8-10 minutes, until cookie bottoms are lightly brown and tops are dry. Allow cookies to set a few minutes before removing from baking sheet.

I waited until the cookies were completely cooled to photograph them. On some recipes, I will probably photograph the baking process as well. For our first recipe, I decided to just shoot some super quick and easy photos.

[Photo Credit: photographyroundtable.com]

I used 1 large sheet of white foam board, one smaller white board (for fill light), natural light from a window, a stepstool for height (I’m only 5’2”) and of course, the cookies. I grabbed three of the other ingredients, the cinnamon, the cranberries, and some random bits of oats. I think the trick to making the photos look good, is to not over-think it. The entire photoshoot took less than 20 minutes. I spent about another 20 minutes adjusting the levels in photoshop, and voila! I’ve got my first set of Kathy’s Kitchen’s recipes photos!

Cheers to happy memories in the making!

-Gina

Stay tuned for next week’s recipe: Kahlua Cake! (because nothing beats cocktails + cake!)