Homemade Oatmeal Cookies Recipe with Raisins and Nuts

Name: Homemade Oatmeal Cookies Recipe with Raisins and Nuts
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 45 min
Total time: 1 h
Cuisine: European
Ingredients: Tolokno or oat flour 1 cup; Wheat flour 0.5 cup; Sugar 0.5 cup; Butter 80-120 g; Salt, cinnamon, vanilla, baking powder to taste; Raisins, nuts optional

I have loved oatmeal cookies since childhood. They were probably the most affordable kids' treat, and you could buy them anywhere. Dark brown, slightly porous, crunchy round cookies (or maybe not quite cookies) were sold by weight. For some reason I don't remember them in packs or boxes. Yet oat flour cookies are extremely easy to bake at home from perfectly ordinary ingredients.

Oatmeal cookies are round, and I have never seen them any other shape, although many people claim they have. The round shape probably comes from the dough containing enough butter, which softens when heated, so the cookies start to spread slightly. When baking oat flour cookies, don't try to match the exact color and taste of the shop-bought kind. Homemade cookies may not look quite the same, but they taste an order of magnitude better.

The dough is made with rolled oats or porridge oats. Oat flakes are polished, steamed oat grains flattened or rolled into thin flakes. To make oat flour, just grind the flakes in a coffee grinder or blender, then sift. Oat flour made this way works perfectly well for oatmeal cookies.

The second option, which is even more convenient, is to buy tolokno (finely ground oat flour) in a shop. It is essentially the same steamed grain, ground or crushed (hence the name). Tolokno can be made from different grains: barley, oats, rye, peas and so on. What makes tolokno more valuable than ordinary flour is that it is made from the whole grain. With today's trend for healthy eating, tolokno is clearly preferable.

Homemade oatmeal cookies are made from oat flakes or tolokno with some wheat flour, cinnamon, sugar and butter. The dough is like the shortcrust for a quiche, but less rich and crumbly.

Vanilla and cinnamon go into the dough for oat flour cookies, and quite often nuts, raisins, honey and chocolate too. Shop-bought cookies are sometimes sprinkled with sesame seeds, which I like. They can also have a filling such as jam or preserves. Personally, I like baking oatmeal cookies because they can be made hard, crunchy and crumbly, and you can add raisins or nuts without holding back.

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Ingredients

15-20 cookies

Tolokno or oat flour 1 cup
Wheat flour 0.5 cup
Sugar 0.5 cup
Butter 80-120 g
Salt, cinnamon, vanilla, baking powder to taste
Raisins, nuts optional

Step-by-step recipe

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For the cookies you can use oat flakes or tolokno. Grind the flakes as finely as possible in a coffee grinder and sift. Tolokno should also be sifted. If you add raisins to the cookies, leave them dry, without soaking. The nuts should be lightly toasted in a dry frying pan and coarsely chopped.
In a bowl, mix the sifted oat flour with two thirds of the wheat flour. Keep the rest of the wheat flour to adjust the consistency of the dough and to prepare the cookies for baking. Add 0.5 tsp of baking powder and 1 tsp of ground cinnamon. Add a pinch of fine salt, vanilla and sugar. By the way, you can add more sugar, and the cookies can be very sweet, because oats give a noticeable bitterness.
The amount of butter can be varied. Less butter gives denser oat flour cookies that are not crunchy. They will resemble the Eastern almond cookies called shakarlama. More butter gives crunchy but higher-calorie cookies. They will also spread during baking and look like the shop-bought kind. Melt the butter without heating it up, and add it to the flour mixture. Also add 1 tbsp of boiled water.
Work the dough with a fork, making sure all the ingredients mix evenly. If the dough turns out too stiff, add another 1 tbsp of water, and if it is too soft, a little wheat flour. While mixing the dough, add the raisins and nuts. The finished dough should be soft and elastic and hardly stick to your hands.
For convenience, divide the dough into several parts. One at a time, roll out the dough by hand or with a rolling pin into a sheet 6-7 mm thick on a floured table. Use 5-6 cm cooking rings to cut round oat flour cookies. So the cookies don't stick to the table and your hands, you can dust them with flour, which does no harm.
Line a baking sheet with baking paper. There is no need to grease it, as the dough has enough butter and the cookies won't stick. Transfer the cookies to the sheet. A thin metal spatula or a wide chef's knife makes this easy. It is better not to pick up the dough rounds with your hands, as they easily lose their shape. Space them well apart, because if the dough starts to spread in the heat, the cookies may stick together.
Preheat the oven to 180 °C and put the baking sheet in. Baking usually takes 30-40 mins. Cookies with raisins can be left soft, and then they need less time, about 20-25 mins. If you dry them out, they become crunchy. The baking time determines how hard and crumbly they are. But in any case don't let them overbake, as they burn easily and will taste accordingly.
Take the baking sheet out of the oven and let the cookies cool. They will dry out a little more as they cool. Ideally, the finished cookies are sweet, crunchy and slightly crumbly. As a rule they are a little lighter in color than the shop-bought ones. They keep quite a long time, just don't put them in an airtight container. It is enough to put them in a basket and cover with a napkin.
Homemade cookies are great with tea or simply as a light snack during the day. They go especially well with warm milk, an unforgettable taste of childhood.