Home-y Oatmeal Raisin Sandwich Cookies

I'm sure you were all worried, so for the record, I survived midterms! It was a little iffy for a while if I would make it out alive, but I did. And thank goodness it's all over. 

Now I can finally enjoy this wonderful, heavenly week known as Spring Break in which I plan to sleep, take long, luxurious walks, read books for fun, and catch up on the huge list of delicious things that have been on my "to-bake" list forever. 

Whenever I come home after being away for what feels like a long time, I tend to get swept up in the nostalgia of smells. Every scent in every corner of my house reminds me of a different childhood memory- cuddling with my cats while watching cartoons, playing with dolls in the musty old attic, the inviting freshly-laundered smell of my bed...
I figured in celebration of nostalgia, I would start by baking something warm, comforting and classically home-y. Hello, oatmeal raisin cream pies. 

Oatmeal Raisin Sandwich Cookies 

Makes one dozen sandwiches

Cookies (adapted from here):

1 tbsp flax meal
1/4 cup earth balance or other vegan margarine
1/4 cup canola oil
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tbsp granulated sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp whole wheat pastry flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp all-spice
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 cup rolled oats
3/4 cup raisins, soaked in warm water

Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting (adapted from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World):

2 tbsp earth balance
2 tbsp vegan cream cheese
1 3/4 cups powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp cinnamon

1. Preheat your oven to 350º and line two cookie sheets with parchment paper. Mix the flax meal with 3 tbsp warm water and let sit in the fridge for at least 3 minutes. 
2. In a medium bowl, cream together the margarine, canola oil and sugars until fluffy. Stir in the vanilla and "flax egg." 
3. In a separate small bowl, whisk together the flour, spices, baking powder and salt. Add the dry into the wet and stir until smooth. 
4. Fold in the oats and drained raisins. Use a spoon to drop dollops of the batter onto the cookies sheets, leaving room for spreading. Bake for about 10-15 minutes or until the edges start to brown.

5. While the cookies are baking, make the frosting by creaming together the earth balance and cream cheese. Mix in the powdered sugar in 1/2 cup increments using an electric hand-mixer, or use those wrist muscles, like me. Finally, stir in the vanilla and cinnamon. Keep refrigerated until use.

6. Let the cookies cool completely before frosting. Once they are ready, spread about 1 tbsp of frosting on a cookie and sandwich another one on top. Devour, lick your fingers, and go in for seconds ;)

Taste & Create

Eat well, travel often.

This is my new life motto. I'll be completely honest... I found it on stumble upon. Doesn't make it any less important. 

Recently, I think I have been doing an excellent job following this saying. I have been taking walks to new places every day here in California and trying delicious food at farmers markets, mexican restaurants and in our own kitchen! 

Can I just live here now, please?

Both of these I took on a morning walk along the Monterey coast with my 1970s pentax

Now, onto the food. Funny story about making these cookies. This was my first time doing Taste & Create (a fun monthly blogger recipe exchange) and I was really excited to swap recipes with Kat from Study Food! I decided to try veganizing her chocolate oat spice cookies. Making it vegan wasn't a problem- I just swapped earth balance with butter and a flax egg with a real egg- the issue was accidentally reading the amount of flour as 1 tbsp instead of 1 1/4 cup minus 1 tbsp. I'm not sure why I thought that could be right... but I put the little oatmeal-y blobs in the oven anyway. When I saw that they were not doing anything except bubble and melt, I double-checked the recipe, saw my big mistake and quickly pulled them out of the oven. I ended up scraping all of the oatmeal mush back into the bowl and then adding in the flour, but since the chocolate chips had all melted they ended up as solid chocolate cookies instead of chocolate chip. Despite that whole ordeal, they turned out pretty well!

Oatmeal Chocolate Spice Cookies

makes about 2 dozen

1/2 cup earth balance

1/2 tbsp vanilla extract

1/2 tbsp water

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1 flax egg (1 tbsp flax meal mixed with 3 tbsp water)

1 1/4 cup whole wheat flour

1 tbsp cocoa

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1 1/2 cups rolled oats

1 cup chocolate chips

1. Preheat the oven to 350º and grease or place parchment paper onto two large cookie sheets. 
2. Whip up the earth balance with a fork until it is creamy, then stir in the vanilla and water. Add the sugars and cream until nice and fluffy.

3. Stir in the flax egg, then slowly add the flour, cocoa, baking soda and nutmeg. Mix well, then fold in the oats and chocolate chips (or stir in melted chocolate chips if you want just chocolate cookies!).
4. Roll about tablespoon-sized pieces of dough into balls and flatten them onto your prepared cookie sheets. Bake for about 8 minutes. Take the cookies out while they're still very soft- they will harden as they cool and you don't want them too crumbly! Let cool and enjoy with some milk, coffee or tea.

These are very unusual cookies. The chewy texture is great, but it took a few bites to get used to the strong nutmeg flavor. They definitely grew on me. The friend I'm staying with didn't like them at first, but had another the next day and said they were in fact oddly addicting and actually pretty tasty. They taste like fairly "healthy" cookies because of the whole wheat flour, so keep that in mind. However, it was a fun experiment! If you decide to make them, just make sure you do the smart thing and read all the directions and ingredient amounts before putting anything in the oven. Whoops. 

See what Kat from Study Food tried out from my recipes here!