Simple Oatmeal Yogurt Cookies

Honestly, this needs no introduction. These cookies are extremely easy to make and they're perfect for breakfast, just have them with a cup of simple hot coffee or (if you are into yogurt like I am) cut some fruits that you like in small pieces, mix them with half a cup of plain yogurt and crumble some oatmeal cookies on top, and voilà - another delicious breakfast is ready!

Simple Oatmeal Yogurt Cookies
makes about 2 dozen medium size cookies

1 cup simple white flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 Tabsp butter
3/4 cups sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup yogurt

1 1/2 cups oats (any kind you like, I was using quick cooking oats. Use old-fashioned rolled oats if you prefer cookies that are more crispy and chunky)

Preheat oven to 180 C. Line 2 baking sheets with baking paper. Cream together butter and sugar using an electric mixer on high speed. Add the egg and yogurt, mix well. In another bowl sift together flour, baking powder and salt and sieve the dry mixture over the wet mixture, mix everything together. Now fold in the oats. For one cookie drop about one tablespoon of the batter on the lined baking sheets (or about one teaspoon of batter for smaller size cookies). When dropping the small portions of batter on the sheet, make sure to leave some space in between as the cookies will slightly spread while baking. Bake for about 10 - 12 minutes until nicely golden and done. Enjoy.

Chewy Oatmeal Cookies with Lemon & Raisins

The next batch is baked. And again: it's oatmeal cookies! My constant posts about different kinds of oatmeal cookies might be irretating or even annoying and I apologize for that, but I can't help it. Someday I might even write a book called 'Confessions of an Oatmeal Cookie Addict'. 

These cookies contain a little bit more sugar than I use in general which is a big minus for this recipe, but the extremely chewy consistency mixed with a fruity lemony taste as well as some raisins remains just unbeatable. I'm definitely adding this recipe to my list of favorites (which is probably endless) but nevertheless, I'm going to reduce the amount of sugar the next time.

Chewy Oatmeal Lemon Raisin Cookies
makes about 4 dozen medium to big size cookies

2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
2 cups oats
1.5 cups sugar (as already said, for me 1 cup or even 3/4 might be enough, use as much as you wish)
3/4 cup oil
1 cup apple juice (or any juice you like)
a pinch of salt
2 tsp of finely grated lemon zest
200gm dark raisins

Line 3 - 4 baking sheets with baking paper. Preheat the oven to 200 C. (Yes those are baked at a very high temperature which gives them nicely crispy sides and a soft and chewy inside.) Whisk together flour and baking powder. Add the sugar, oil, apple juice, salt and lemon zest. Whisk well until incorporated. Now fold in the oats and raisins and mix well. For each cookie drop about 1 tsp of cookie batter onto the lined baking sheet, if you want medium size cookies. Use about half a teaspoon of batter for smaller cookies. Continue to drop the batter on the baking sheets leaving some space in between as the cookies will slightly melt and spread while baking. Bake for about 10 - 12 minutes. After 10 or 12 minutes they might still look undone but please do yourself a favour and don't leave them in the oven for longer than this, you don't want to end up with burned cookies that taste like wood. 10 minutes are perfectly fine. 

Enjoy them with some coffee or tea (I dunked them, as always...)

Simple Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies (Eggless)

You definitely don't want to live without the experience of eating a fresh and still hot cookie with big melted chocolate chunks in it. Go one step further and sprinkle the top of the cookie dough with some sugar before baking, for a sweet and crunchy sugar crust. Then make yourself a cup of hot strong coffee or tea and dunk your fresh from the oven chocolate chip oatmeal cookie in it. If you think I'm overdoing it, you're mistaken. This can enormously sweeten up your life. And that's what cookies are made for, right?!

This is the first eggless oatmeal cookie recipe that I've ever tried. I'm actually not into eating vegan at all (I'm sorry, beef steak is my passion...) but I got this recipe from a very good friend of mine who is vegan. And since I needed to indulge my passion for oatmeal cookies I just had to bake them right away. As already said, they turned out really good, seriously. Although I - for some reason - prefer baking cookies using eggs, this is still a very simple and delicious recipe and I'm definitely going to bake these again as soon as possible.

Simple Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies (Eggless)
makes about 20 medium size cookies

1 c sugar
1 tsp ground ginger
1 pinch ground nutmeg
1 pinch ground cloves
1 pinch salt
2 c flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 c vegetable oil
1 c apple juice (or any juice you like)
2 c oats
100gm chocolate chips (or just regular chocolate, chopped in small pieces)

Preheat your oven to 150 C. Line 2 baking sheets with baking paper. In a large bowl combine all the ingredients, just throw everything together and whisk well until you have a very sticky and lumpy dough. Drop tablespoons of batter on the lined baking sheets (I used between 1 and 1.5 tablespoons of dough for each cookie). Bake for about 25 minutes until done and nicely golden. Enjoy warm and fresh from the oven or completely cooled.

Optional: To get a nice sugar crust, sprinkle the top of the cookies with a little bit of sugar before you place them in the oven.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

Remember the chocolate-filled oatmeal cookies I posted some days ago? They made me an oatmeal-cookie-addict. It's actually quite hard to believe since I had never been into baking cookies that much. That has changed now. I've already tried a few batches of different cookie recipes, I've just taken two sheets of freshly baked cookies out of the oven and - guess what?! - there are a lot more recipes and pictures to come. If you have any great oatmeal cookie recipes you'd like to share with me, feel free to comment or post a link to your recipe. I would gladly appreciate it!

So here comes another delicious recipe. It uses simple vegetable oil instead of butter or margarine and less sugar, which makes these cookies a bit more healthy than regular butter cookies. Also they turned out really rustic and chunky having crispy sides but a very soft and chewy inside, which I absolutely love as it makes them perfect for being dunked into my morning coffee.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
makes about 4 dozen medium size cookies

3/4 cup oil
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg 
zest of 1 lemon
1.5 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 cup raisins
4 cups rolled oats
sugar for sprinkling (optional)

Preheat your oven to 175 C. Line 2 baking sheets with baking paper. In a large bowl whisk together oil, sugar, egg and lemon zest. Sift together flour and baking powder and add to the wet mixture while whisking. Fold in raisins and oats and mix until well incorporated. Drop about one tablespoon of cookie batter (or about one teaspoon if you prefer smaller cookies) onto the lined baking sheets leaving some space between the cookies as they will slightly melt and spread out while in the oven. Smooth the top of the cookies using a teaspoon or leave them just like that if you prefere the messy version. Sprinkle the top of the cookies with some sugar if you want (and I bet you want) a slight sugar crust. Bake for about 15 - 20 minutes until nicely golden. Let cool completely and store the cookies in a dry and airtight box. Enjoy ...

Oatmeal Plum Streusel Breakfast Cake

When I know that in my kitchen there is some kind of fresh streusel cake that I plan to eat for breakfast I, actually, can never wait until breakfast. In some cases I can even predict that a cake like this will never see tomorrow. Because it's is so good. It's a perfect mixture between cooked oatmeal and a fruit salat combined in a cake with streusels on top. Not too sweet. Not too heavy. But too yummy. 

And another good thing about this cake is that you can add to it whatever you wish. You could add some spices like ground ginger, nutmeg or cinnamon to make the cake more cozy. Or you might even want to replace the plums with any fruits you like, depending on the season, like cherries, apricots or figs. It's up to you.

Oatmeal Plum Streusel Breakfast Cake

batter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp salt
1/2 cup oil
1/2 cup milk or water
2 cups flour (if you want the extremely healthy version of a breakfast cake, use whole wheat or whole spelt flour. I was using regular white spelt flour.)
2 cups oats
2 tsp baking powder
+ about 2 cups plums, in thin slices (I added frozen plum slices to the batter, but I think fresh plums would be perfectly fine too)

Preheat the oven to 175C. Line a approximately 8 x 12 inch - baking pan with baking paper. Whisk together sugar, eggs and salt. Whisk in oil and milk. Add the dry ingredients and whisk well until you have a thick and moist mixture. Gently fold in about two thirds of the plums. Pour the batter in the lined pan and smooth the top. Arrange the remaining plums on the top. Now prepare the streusel mixture...

streusel
60gm sugar
60gm very soft or melted butter
100 - 150gm white flour (it depends on what consistency you want the streusels to have, I wanted them to be very crumbly, not soft, so I added much more flour)

Combine the ingredients for the streusels and make the mixture very crumbly using either a hand mixer on low speed or your fingers or a fork. Arrange the streusel mixture on top of the cake. Place the baking pan in the oven and bake for about 55 - 65 minutes until done and nicely browned. Let cool for a few minutes, then remove from the pan and let cool completely.

Chocolate filled Oatmeal Ginger Cookies

  

- It's builder's tea. We dunk biscuits into it.

- Dunk?

- Means lowering the biscuit into the tea and letting it soak in there and trying to calculate the exact moment before the biscuit dissolves, when you whip it up into your mouth and enjoy the blissful union of biscuits and tea combined. It's more relaxing than it sounds.
(Quote taken from the movie 'The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel')

Everytime I eat cookies together with some black tea or coffee I think of this quote. My favorite ones to dunk into tea or coffee are oatmeal cookies. And my absolute all-time favorite ones to dunk into tea or coffee are chocolate filled spicey cookies. It's so simple but so delicious so that you just have to try this recipe, you won't regret it!

And oh! before I forget, here's another lovely quote I absolutely adore from the same movie:

- Everything will be allright in the end. So if it is not allright, then it is not yet the end ...

Chocolate filled Oatmeal Ginger Cookies

(makes about 1 dozen big double-cookies or about 2 dozen small double-cookies)

dough

1/2 cup butter or margarine, at room temperature

3/4 cup sugar

1 egg

1 1/4 cups oats

2/3 cups white flour

2 tsp baking powder

pinch of ground nutmeg

2 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp salt

Preheat your oven to 200C. Line 4 baking sheets with baking paper. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg, just until incorporated. Sieve over flour together with baking powder, salt and spices, add oats and mix everything well until you have a thick but still soft mixture. (You might want to add a little bit more flour if it seems to you that the dough is too sticky.) Roll out dough on a lightly floured surface and cut out the cookies using a drinking glass or a cup of the size you want your cookies to be. Place the cookies on the lined baking sheets and bake for about 10 minutes until done and nicely browned. Let cool completely before filling them.

filling

about 100gm melted dark chocolate (it depends on how much filling you want to have between two cookies, if you want them to be less-sweet, reduce the amount of chocolate. If you want the extreme sugar shock, use a lot of sweet milk chocolate instead of less dark chocolate. It totally depends on your taste. You decide.)

Take two completely cooled cookies and spread some melted chocolate (about 1-2 tsp) on one and then simply stick the two cookies together. Continue to fill the remaining cookies until everything is used up. Place the filled cookies on a wire rack until the chocolate is completely cooled.

Enjoy with a hot cup of tea or coffee. And don't forget to dunk them into it.

Delicious Oatmeal Pancakes For Breakfast

This is exactly what I love to start my day with. Some easy and delicious oat pancakes with cream cheese and homemade jam. And an amazingly sweet smell in my kitchen (and the whole neighbourhood, as soon as I open my windows). If you like to have oatmeal for breakfast but also freshly fried pancakes then combine these two dishes and try this recipe!

Oatmeal Pancakes
makes about 5 large or 10 small pancakes

250gm oats
550gm milk
5 Tabsp homemade vanilla sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 eggs
olive oil for frying

Combine oats and milk. Let soak for about 1 hour.
Add sugar, cinnamon, eggs and whisk until the ingredients are well combined.
Heat some oil in a medium size pan.
Fry pancakes until both sides are golden brown.

Enjoy with whatever your heart and your belly desire. Cream cheese, honey, jam, marmelade, fruits, ...

Gulchathaii