Chewy Oatmeal Cookies!

If you know anything about me, you know that I like my cakes moist and my cookies dry--well, crispy, so to speak. There's nothing quite like biting into a thin and crispy chocolate chip cookie or a crunchy and crumbly piece of shortbread. However, every once in a while I get a craving for something just a little bit...chewy. Not those chewy granola bars and not a sticky, gummy caramel pop either. I'm thinking: oatmeal.

Unlike my peanut butter cookie experiments, which came out a little too dry on the first try, my first attempt at oatmeal cookies were exactly what I was looking for in an oatmeal cookie--perfect amount of chew with just a hint of molasses flavor from the brown sugar and no unnecessarily add-ins (think raisins, nuts, etc.) taking away from that flavor or making me chew or crunch too hard.

Thus, my traditional Oatmeal Cookie recipe was born:

Ingredients:

1 stick of butter, softened (recommend: microwave ~20 seconds)
1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
1 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 and 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
<1 teaspoon salt
<1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
2 cups quick cooking oats (can substitute with whole rolled oats)
1 cup whole rolled oats

Directions:

1.) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

2.) With an electric mixer (or with a fork whipped very fast, as I did), combine the butter, applesauce, brown sugar, and white sugar. Add the eggs one at a time and beat after each. Stir in the vanilla.

3.) In a separate bowl, sift the flour, salt, baking soda, and cinnamon. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture, stirring after each addition until the flour mixture is well incorporated. Fold in the oats.

4.) Form the dough into small mounds, flattened just slightly on a cookie sheet greased with nonstick cooking spray. Bake approximately 8-10 minutes (7 minutes worked perfectly on mine).

5.) Cool 5 minutes on the cookie sheet, then transfer to a wire cooling rack. Eat and enjoy!

With not too much butter for a cookie recipe (it does make about 36 cookies off just one stick), my traditional whole wheat pastry flour, a touch of applesauce, and two different kinds of oats, you can still count this recipe as a slightly healthier alternative to traditional cookie fare. And it tastes amazing too.  =)