Home, Sweet Home

As of yesterday evening, I am overjoyed to say that I’m finally back at home, where I belong. It’s been a long, difficult and painful journey spending so much time apart from my loving family and the familiar environment I had become so comfortable in, but I want to thank everyone who’s been so kind to me throughout this whole ordeal. No more medical emergencies from now on, which means there should be nothing to interrupt my flow of posts again for such a prolonged period. I appreciate every last person who takes the time to read my rambling entries, and without all of you readers out there, I don’t know that I would have made it through this whole ordeal.

You could imagine, I’m sure, that after this unprecedented absence from the kitchen, I had a fairly lengthy agenda of things I wanted to sample. With so many things to do and such a long list of different recipes to try, 10 minutes had barely passed since dropping my bags before racing into the kitchen and preheating the oven. I guess you can say I had a smooth landing, and I hit the ground baking.

Starting out simple, I thought it would be a comforting treat to make some good old fashioned oatmeal raisin cookies. I had actually rarely eaten these as a child, believing raisins to be pure evil concentrated into the form of dried fruit. I’m still not exactly wild about them, but I do enjoy them in certain applications, such as this.

Quietly flattening out my small rounds of dough, a sense of belonging really hit me, and I knew I truly was home. It didn’t even matter if the cookies turned out or not; It was simply the processes that provided comfort and nostalgia of “the good old days.”

Coming together very quickly, I felt as though only a minute had passed when the timer went off and my sheet of batter has now been transformed into cookies. Not waiting around too long for them to cool, I dug in and was somewhat surprised as to what I discovered. They were actually fluffy, not really chewy like I thought they would have been, but I liked this new sort of texture a lot despite my expectations. It was almost as if I were eating a small piece of sweet oatmeal quick-bread, which is certainly not a bad thing.

It’s good to be home.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

1 1/4 Cups Whole Wheat Flour
1 Cup Rolled Oats
1 1/2 Teaspoons Baking Powder
1/4 Teaspoon Salt
1 Tablespoon Cinnamon
1 Tablespoon Maple Syrup
1/4 Cup Sugar
1 Teaspoon Vanilla
1/2 Banana, Mashed
1/2 Cup Raisins
1/4 Cup Soymilk

Begin by preheating your oven to 350 degrees.

Mix together your dry ingredients, namely the flour, oats, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. Afterwards, slowly add in the maple syrup, sugar, vanilla, and mashed banana. Make sure the batter is mixed well. It will be a somewhat dry batter so that you can roll balls in your palms and then flatten them on the cookie sheet. If it’s still too dry to do so, you can always add some extra soymilk until you’re happy with the consistency.

Place parchment paper onto your baking sheet and distribute your cookie rounds evenly on top. Make sure you’re happy with the sizes before baking, because these really won’t spread very much. Slide your cookies into the oven for approximately 8-10 minutes. Don’t wait for them to brown, because then they’ll probably already be burnt. They look almost uncooked when they’re done, so don’t worry about their appearance too much.

You should get somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 medium sized cookies, but it depends on what you consider medium.

Printable Recipe

*And just as a little side note: My food reviews were meant to take place of my baking exploits while I was away from the kitchen, but now that I’m back, does everyone still want me to keep reviewing pre-made vegan foods? I still have 2 or 3 that I’m going to post regardless, but do you want me to continue seeking out new ones afterwards?