My daughter and I have been playing around in our test kitchen again and have come up with a delicious new cookie! Test kitchen is just a fancy way of saying we’ve been cooking and concocting and this time, our mouths watered at the results. Oatmeal-Carrot Cookies that literally melt in your mouth with sweet delicious flavors that will have you tossing carrot seeds in the ground so fast your head will spin!
Sure, you can buy carrots from your local market but where’s the fun in that? I love to go to my supermarket and wander the aisles (I’m particularly excited by the weekly buy-one-get-one deals), but I really love harvesting vegetables from my organic garden, then proceeding directly to the kitchen for consumption of the same. Awesome feeling.
Anyway, with a bounty of freshly harvested carrots, I thought, “I need a new way to eat these babies.” My Fluffiest Carrot Cake is divine but way too fattening to eat on a regular basis. I mean, it’s too easy to eat three slices in a sitting. Too easy and bad for the hips. Very bad. So I decided to make a healthy cookie, instead. Unfortunately, healthy cookies are kinda hard to make, hence the title of this blog post. Our first two attempts failed. We sweetened the dough with honey which made the final cookies too “liquidy.” For the next batch we cut down on the honey but the cookies still didn’t have enough substance to them. Answer?
We gave up on the honey and reverted back to sugar. It works. Don’t fix it if it ain’t broke, right? Anyhoo, the carrots make up for the sugar on the healthy front (at least that’s what I tell myself). We also included raisins, much to my daughter’s dismay as she abhors the dried-up little gems, but she downed the cookies just the same which attests to how scrumptious they are!
A couple of notes regarding the recipe: dark brown sugar lends a more intense flavor, though light brown sugar will work perfectly fine. Creaming the sugar and butter is key. Use real butter that’s been allowed to soften at room temperature. No substitutes here. Next, the carrots should be shredded very fine, or blended to a grated consistency. I have a mini-Cuisinart blender and it works wonders for producing tiny chunks of carrot. Missed a few, as you can see the larger chunks in the photo. We also noted a difference between using an ungreased cookie sheet and a greased cookie sheet. The spread factor was greater on the latter, so watch the baking time and the spread.
That’s it! Wonderfully, delicious oatmeal-carrot delights. Enjoy!
Oatmeal Carrot Cookies
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 cup rolled oats, not instant
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup finely shredded/grated carrots
1 TBSP orange zest
6 TBSP butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 egg
Preheat 350° F. In small bowl, combine oats, raisins, carrots and orange zest. Set aside. In small bowl, combine flour, salt and baking soda. Set aside. In a medium-sized bowl (or standing mixer bowl) combine sugar and butter and beat until creamy smooth. Add extract and egg and beat until well-blended. Add in flour mixture and stir until well-combined. Add oat mixture and stir until all ingredients are thoroughly combined.
Using teaspoon or a small ice cream scoop, drop balls of dough onto ungreased cookie sheet.
Bake 10 – 12 minutes or until cookies turn golden brown. For more even baking, rotate trays in oven halfway through cooking process. Cool completely (if you can!) or go ahead and eat warm and gooey from the tray.
Recipe makes two dozen cookies.
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