It helps the ball of dough spread out a little, and gives an overall yummy finished look. Banging the melting and cooking dough helps spread out the cookie shape and get a nice crisp/chew on the butter edges. Basically, during cooking, the tray full of cookies gets dropped down, without actually disturbing (ruining) the cookies, onto the oven tray or the stove top. This technique has become quite famous in the cookie baking world. Not chilling the dough, runs the risk of getting butter runs, uneven cooking, and over-browned bottoms. I form the balls first so that there’s minimal handling between cooling and baking, but any order is surely better than not doing it at all. Trust me when I tell you to rest the dough in the fridge. Another thought is to reduce the amount of raisins to 1 cup to get just a taste of raisin in each cookie. Chocolate chips would be fine, but I say leave them for a classic chocolate chip cookie. If you hate raisins, and aren’t willing to try my reconstituted trick to possibly change your mind, I invite you to sub for pecans or leave them out all together. Just make sure you drain them thoroughly. This way you know for sure they’ve had enough time to plump back up. I recommend that you rehydrate the raisins first thing, along with the cooling butter. Regular raisins will work fine, however this way creates a really tender texture. I call for reconstituted raisins in this recipe, and the reason is that the extra moisture helps the raisins maintain the appropriate texture through bake time. You could switch it up and mix AP and WW and it would be delicious. That step isn’t as important for cookie dough. I call for AP flour because it’s what I always have. If all you have is old fashioned, go ahead and pulse them for about 10 seconds in a food processor to break them up and create “quick” oats. Quick oats are the key to perfect oatmeal cookies. This combination significantly helps create a rich, chewy flavor. Set a timer for 5-7 minutes if you need it. It should be really fluffy and much lighter in color. And then again after the eggs get added from image 5 to 6. And the reason is that, I need the sugar to change consistency, as you can see from image 2 to 3 above.
I ask you to beat the butter and sugars together for quite some time. If you’re in a pinch and only have one or the other, that will be fine to substitute for 100%. I call for a mix of each dark and light brown sugar and I think it helps provide a nice caramelized flavor and perfect chew. Just adjust the salt to add about 1/2-1 teaspoon. Salted butter is key, but if you don’t have it, unsalted will certainly do. You could absolutely use a regular softened butter if it’s say, a hot summer’s day, and the butter is extremely soft. You can see what I mean in the first image above. The butter should return to a solid texture and opaque color when it has cooled enough. I ask you to melt and fully cool the butter so that we are in completely control of the softness. Below I’ve laid out each step so you can see for yourself how the dough comes together and what it should look like at each step. There are a few techniques I lay out in this recipe that are important to the outcome. She says they’re the best oatmeal raisin cookies she’s ever had.
My cousin Portia was one of my testers, and she’s already made this recipe 4x before I’ve even written this post up. I needed other people to try the flavors and test the method for consistency. The reason being that I couldn’t decide if I was being too indulgent with the flavor of these cookies. I’ve been working on this recipe pretty much since COVID-19 isolation began, and have asked a few friends to recipe test for me. These cookies are the definition of decadent for just that reason. I’m not even a big fan of butterscotch, so don’t worry, it’s just a nod to the flavor. In my recipe I use egg yolks and melted butter to create an almost-butterscotch flavor. Most recipes you come across for home baked end up being too dry, too much chew from the raisin, or just overall lackluster. You know the kind: chewy, flavorful…actually good. This recipe was born out of the desire to create super moist, bakery style oatmeal raisin cookies at home. Deliciously decadent describes my take on an oatmeal raisin cookie, perfectly. They’re certainly classic, however they are rich and buttery and so special. Not because I couldn’t come up with “oatmeal raisin cookies”, but because I really wanted to emphasize that these are no ordinary oatmeal cookie. I went back and forth on what to title these cookies for quite some time.