After drooling over some scrumptious looking oatmeal cookies the other day at the Nashville farmers’ market, I was in the mood to bake some of my own. But not just any oatmeal cookies — no, I wanted to bake extra chewy oatmeal “craisin” (dried cranberry) cookies.

I don’t know about you, but in my opinion, an oatmeal cookie just has to be chewy. While I can abide by both crispy and chewy chocolate chip cookies, I refuse to acknowledge crispy oatmeal cookies. Just, no.

While I’m still working on the perfect recipe, I like the one that produced this most recent batch. My technique for discovering my own recipes is to take existing recipes from food bloggers I admire, and slowly tweak them more and more until I make them my own.

With that said, today’s cookies are inspired heavily by these yummy discs of goodness from Sally’s Baking Addiction. If you’ve never checked out her blog, be prepared for its awesomeness!

I made a number of tweaks to the proportions of ingredients, and I omitted nuts and used dried cranberries instead of raisins. But I kept her secret ingredient of molasses!

I’m planning on taking these into my new office to help endear myself to my new coworkers.

What do you think? Do you like oatmeal cookies? If so, with or without raisins? Or with a twist like these with cranberries?

Bon apetit!

xoxo Charlotte

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Chewy Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies

Dry ingredients:

• 3/4 cup all purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 1/2 cup rolled oats
• 1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
• 2 tbsp granulated sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 cup sweetened dried cranberries

Wet ingredients:

• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 tbsp molasses
• 1 tbsp vanilla extract
• 1 large egg

Method:

Using a paddle attachment, beat butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar on medium until creamed. Beat in vanilla extract, egg, and molasses on high for approximately one minute.

In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, salt, baking soda, cinnamon. Add to stand mixer, and beat on medium until just mixed. Fold in oats and dried cranberries.

Refrigerated for at least one hour. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 Fahrenheit. Bake for 12 minutes on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper, or until edges are brown. Note: centers will still look moist when they are removed from the oven.