BEST Oatmeal Raisin Cookie. Ever.

Occasionally, I peruse the pantry for open items that will deteriorate if not used used up. Those items may determine what I will make for dinner or what treats I will make and take to an upcoming event.

This week, I noticed an open bag of raisins that would certainly go to waste because no one in this house eats raisins much. I can't even remember why I bought them. But there were a lot of them because I bought them at Costco.

And then there is this:

That's 20 lbs. of quick oats my friend. Twenty pounds.

Though the shelf life of this (and most unopened Thrive products) is 25 years, the shelf life after opening it is 1 year. I can't remember when I opened it, but I'm guessing it's been about 6-9 months. And I'm pretty sure I only used a cup or two.

Time to make something with oatmeal.

I wanted to make a treat for a baptism on Saturday. No brainer. Oatmeal Raisin Cookies!

I went to my trusty, tried, and true resource, the Better Homes and Garden Cookbook. I don't know why, because for the past 3-4 years, I pretty much use the Internet for any recipe. Except chocolate chip cookies (saving that for another post).

What resulted was a batch of the worst tasting, worst looking, nastiest bleh cookies I have ever had the misfortune of passing down my gullet.

Okay, I guess they don't look that bad, but they taste, well, not nasty but definitely bleh.

Made the whole darn batch even though I could tell right off they weren't right. I should have known from the recipe. It called for baking powder. The ratio of butter to flour was way off. And no salt. No salt! The horror.

I wanted to try again because now I had a hankering for oatmeal raisin cookies. Yesterday, on my daily visit to Pinterest, I found what looked to be a great recipe. I went to the site of smitten kitten.

Her take on oatmeal raisin cookies is right. on. the. mark. Bullseye. Go there. Out of respect, I'm not even going to print the recipe here or use her pictures. GO THERE!

She is a cookie goddess.

She started with the Quaker Oats box recipe and made it better.

But what is absolutely amazing is I made it EVEN BETTER. Me!
How? I added coconut. Also, I used butter flavor Crisco. And pecans instead of walnuts, though I only used half of what the recipe called for.

I'm telling you, these cookies are TO. DIE. FOR. Exclamation point.

 

As promised by smitten kitten, they are crispy on the outside, chewy-gooey on the inside.

They are so good, I ate a half dozen. That's so bad because I started Weight Watchers 2 weeks ago and have lost 4.4 pounds and was doing great this week until tonight.

6 cookies was too many.

4 would have satisfied just fine.