Chewy Oatmeal, Cranberry, and Dark Chocolate Cookies

I wanted to make cookies as a gift for my friend’s graduation. Since I had oatmeal, dried cranberries, and a lindt chocolate bar, I decided to make oatmeal, cranberry, and chocolate cookies. But I would need a recipe that would not require butter because I didn’t have any butter in the house. Luckily, I was able to come across a recipe for oatmeal cookies on Allrecipes.com that used oil instead of butter. I made some adjustments to the original recipe such as eliminating coconut flakes, reducing the sugar, and putting in cinnamon, dried cranberries, and chocolate. To add a little celebratory touch to it, I decorated the cookies with congratulatory words made of icing that hardens. The recipe for the icing can be found at Food.com. The icing in the original recipe was used to accompany gingerbread cookies; however, I didn’t try the gingerbread cookie recipe.

The cookies turned out really well. They were chewy and not too sweet---I really enjoyed them. More importantly, my friend as well as her family members loved it. You guys should give this recipe a try. It is easy, delicious, and don’t have as much calories as oatmeal cookies made from butter. Next time when I bake, I will try to substitute butter with oil to see if it works as well as it did in this recipe. Also, I might consider using this recipe as a base for other cookies. I will let you know how it turns out.

Ingredients

Cookies

• 1 ½ cps all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• ½ cp white sugar
• 1 cp brown sugar
• 1 ½ cps rolled oats
• 1 tsp of ground cinnamon
• ½  cp of dried cranberries
• ½ cp chopped lindt chocolate bar ( I used 70% cocoa dark chocolate)
• ¾ cp of vegetable oil
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Icing

• 3 ¾ cps confectioners’ sugar
• ¼ cp water
• 1 ½ teaspoons light corn syrup
• ½ teaspoon vanilla

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and grease 2 cookie sheets.
2. Mix all the dry ingredients for the cookies together. Form a well in the center and add the eggs, oil, and vanilla extract. Mix the ingredients together with a spoon or your hands. Spoon out the dough or use your hands to make small sized balls. Place the dough 2 inches apart onto the prepared cookie sheets. Flatten the dough with a fork.
3. Bake for 10-12 minutes. Cool the cookies for a few minutes on the baking sheets before removing it to a wire rack to cool completely.
4. Combine the ingredients for the icing in a bowl and mix well. Transfer the icing to a zippy bag and cut off a tiny piece in the corner. Squeeze the icing through the corner to decorate the cookies.