I gifted a few of these Rum-Raisin-Oatmeal Cookies to my neighbors. My neighbor confessed that her husband ate two of the cookies after breakfast as a “breakfast dessert.”
No harm in that. Right? The cookies are oatmeal cookies, after all, and oatmeal is a respectable breakfast food. The way I see it, most breakfast cereals are just deconstructed cookies anyway. (I rest my case! Eat a cookie.)
Whenever you eat them, these are very good Rum-Raisin Oatmeal cookies by any standard. The raisins, after a good soak in rum, are soft and taste almost caramelized in the baked cookie. This cookie recipe is adapted from one that appears in the cookie cookbook, 100 Cookies by Sarah Kieffer. The wafer-thin cookies are the result of Kieffer’s unique “pan banging method” of cookie baking: As the cookies bake in your oven, you lift the tray and let it crash onto the oven shelf several times. Sounds strange, but it works! Kinda cathartic, too!
You’ll be “happy as Larry,” as the old Australian idiom goes, to add this cookie to your repertoire.
Rum-Raisin-Oatmeal Cookies
Ingredients
- 3/4 C. raisins
- 1/2 C. rum
- 2 C. rolled oats
- 1 C. all-purpose flour
- 3/4 t. baking soda
- 3/4 t. salt
- 1/2 t. ground cinnamon
- 12 T. (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter (at room temperature)
- 1 C. granulated sugar
- 1/2 C. brown sugar
- 1 t. grated orange zest
- 1 large egg (at room temperature)
- 1 t. vanilla extract
Directions
- Step 1 Soak raisins in the rum for about 1 hour. Drain and reserve the rum. Set soaked raisins aside.
- Step 2 Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. and adjust the rack to the middle of the oven. Line 3 sheet pans with silicone mats or with parchment paper.
- Step 3 Put oats, flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon in a small bowl and whisk to combine. Set aside.
- Step 4 Use a stand mixer fitted with a paddle. Beat the butter at medium speed for about 1 minute. You want the butter to be creamy. Add the granulated and brown sugars and the orange zest and beat on medium speed until the mixture is light and fluffy. This should take about 3 minutes. Add the egg, vanilla and 1 T. of the reserved rum to the mixture and mix on low speed until combined. Slowly, add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and mix on a low speed until the ingredients are combined. Add raisins and mix to combine.
- Step 5 Use a scoop or a spoon to shape the cookies. You want about 1/4 C. of the dough in each cookie. Arrange the scoops of dough on the prepared sheet pans. Put about six of the scoops (well-spaced apart) on each sheet pan.
- Step 6 Bake one sheet pan of cookies at a time. Bake for about 9 minutes. Then, using a pot holder or oven mitt, lift the pan about four inches off the rack and let it drop back onto the rack. You want the edges of the cookies to flatten. Bake for about two additional minutes. Bang the pan on the rack again. Repeat this 2 times for a total baking time of 13 minutes. Each time you lift and drop the pan the cookie edges will flatten. In the end, your cookie should be golden brown on the edges and the center of the cookie will be a little bit chewy.
- Step 7 When baked, transfer the pan to a rack and cool the cookies for about 10 minutes before moving them to a cookie dish. Repeat this process with the other two sheet pans of cookies.
