We’ve been periodically sharing family recipes from home bakers on the blog. This delightful cookie comes from Joy Zbinden and is her grandma’s recipe; her dad was partial to them being made with raisins. We hope you enjoy them just as much as we did. We all know that family recipes are the best, because they have that additional unspoken ingredient: love.
From Joy Zbinden:
This is my dad’s mom’s recipe and was his favorite cookie. I don’t care for raisins in cookies so I usually leave them out which was known to cause my dad to mumble under his breath, “I don’t know why people don’t put raisins in their cookies anymore.” or “I can’t understand what’s wrong with using raisins in cookies.” I don’t know why he bothered to mumble since I could still clearly hear him. But when I wanted to give him a treat, I made them with raisins. You can serve these plain or drizzle a glaze over them. Or you can use a vanilla crème filling to make an oatmeal cookie sandwich.
Notes from AnkarsrumUSA recipe developer, Carmi Adams:
Two ingredients stood out to me when making this recipe: lard and raisins soaked in boiling water. While I have used lard in many a pastry crust, and soaked dried fruit for other types of recipes, I’ve never done it for a cookie. They must be the secret ingredients for these perfectly soft and chewy cookies.
For this type of cookie dough with several add-ins (oats, nuts, fruit), the stainless steel bowl works best.
This dough looks and feels very sticky, but can be baked right away, no chilling in the refrigerator required.
A big thanks to the Zbinden family for sharing the love. Please let us know if you have any questions or comments about the recipe. Happy baking!
Oatmeal Cookies
130 g. (1 cup) raisins
180 g. (3/4 cup) boiling water
227 g. (1 cup) lard, room temperature
426 g. (2 cups packed) brown sugar
2 large eggs, room temperature
5 g. (1 tsp.) vanilla extract
300 g. (2 1/2 cups) all purpose flour
4 g. (1 tsp.) baking soda
1 g. (1/4 tsp.) table salt
0.5 g. (1/4 tsp.) ground cloves
0.5 g. (1/4 tsp.) ground allspice
2 g. (1 tsp.) ground cinnamon
1 g. (1/2 tsp.) ground nutmeg
200 g. (2 cups) old fashioned rolled oats
57g. (1/2 cup) chopped nuts
Preheat oven to 350º F. Line 2 half sheet pans with parchment paper or nonstick silicone baking mats.
In a small bowl, combine the raisins and boiling water and let sit for 10-15 minutes until raisins have plumped up. Reserve 75 g. (5 Tbsp.) of the soaking water.
In the stainless steel bowl with the roller/scraper, cream the lard and sugar on high speed (6 o’clock) for 4 minutes, stopping and scraping down the roller if necessary.
Add in the eggs and cream for another minute.
Reduce speed to medium (3 o’clock) and mix in vanilla extract and the 75 g. (5 Tbsp.) reserved raisin soaking water.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, cloves, allspice, cinnamon, and nutmeg.
Reduce speed to medium low (2 o’clock) and add in the flour mixture. Mix until combined.
Mix in the oats, nuts and then raisins.
Scoop out rounded tablespoons of dough and place 3 inches apart on prepared baking pans. Bake 10-12 minutes, until edges are starting to brown and center of cookie is set.
Let cool 10 minutes on pan and then remove to a cooling rack to finish cooling.
Yield: 4 dozen cookies
