Apple Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

I'm baaaack! So, my plan to blog more frequently in the new year has gotten off to a rough start. A minor eye procedure with a couple of complications will severly limit the time that you can spend on the computer. In fact, it will probably take me four or five attempts to complete this post. But, I have been dying to share this recipe with you.

This past summer my mom and I went to a local orchard and picked lots of fresh fruit including apples and I posted about it here. We made some applesauce and I froze a ton of apples. So my mission recently was to find some sneaky ways to use my frozen apples. Now, please understand that I am still experimenting with creating my own recipes and making sneaky adjustments to existing recipes so this was a big and exciting undertaking for me.

I found this recipe for apple oatmeal raisin cookies in the "Apple Lover's Cookbook." I loved the idea of apples combined with yummy and healthy oatmeal and raisins. But, I wanted to make a cookie so I did not mess with the butter content as I have not had great success in modifying butter content in cookies without making a complete mess and not very tasty cookies. Butter is important to maintain the consistency of the cookie as well as carry the flavor of the other ingredients. If you have found success in substituting butter in cookie recipes then I would love to hear about it.

So, now that I look at the recipe the main substitution I made was using flour blend for the white flour. Flour blend is a combination of unbleached white flour, whole wheat flour and wheat germ that you can read about here. It is a great way to sneak some whole grains and fiber and can be used in almost any recipe as a substitute for white flour.

Oh, and I did not peel the apples as instructed. I never peel apples. Never. So far, it has not affected the recipes. Why get rid of all that fiber?

You will notice that these cookies are very flat. This is my first attempt at making this recipe and substituting the same amount of flour blend as flour. Well, actually I made a an entire cookie sheet that looked like this the first time I made these cookies. Not sure what it is about this recipe, but anytime I have made it with the called for amount of flour this is what happens. Usually, you can substitute the exact amount of flour blend without any problem. Not so here, but this may happen if you use regular flour, too, but I have not tried that yet. So, this is what I did . . .

I added another 1/2 c. of whole wheat pastry flour and they got a little thicker, but not quite what I call a good result of baking cookies. So, I . . .

added another 1/2 c. of whole wheat pastry flour and finally got cookies with a great consistency and that were soft and chewy just the way that we like them around here.

So, there you have it. Apple oatmeal raisin cookies with some extra whole grains and fiber! Remember all you have to do is click on the title of this post or on the recipes tab at the side to get the entire recipe in a form that you can print out.

Enjoy!