Whole Wheat Oatmeal Cookies

Whole Wheat Oatmeal Cookies

1 Cup butter ½ cup brown rice flour
1 Cup firmly packed brown sugar ½ Cup whole wheat flour
½ Cup granulated sugar 1 teaspoon baking soda
2 tablespoons honey 1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 eggs ¼ teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon vanilla ½ teaspoon salt
1 Cup oat flour 3 cups rolled oats

1 cup raisins, cranberries, dried cherries, dates and/or walnuts, pecans or coconut

Beat butter until light and creamy. Add sugar/s and beat again until smooth. Add eggs, vanilla and honey; beat well.
Combine the flours, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt and mix until evenly combined.
Stir the flour mixture into the butter/sugar/egg mixture, and then stir in oats and raisins (or other addition). The cookie dough should be soft, slightly sticky; not too dry. Because flours vary, the amounts above may need to be adjusted. To test, bake a couple of cookies and adjust accordingly. You can bake as soon as the dough is made, or refrigerate up to two days. Bake 10 – 12 minutes at 350. If you want a crispier cookie, bake until they are golden. For a softer cookie, remove from the oven just as the edges are turning brown, leave on cookie sheet for about 1 minute (no more than 2!) and then move to wire rack to cool.

Notes about ingredients:

I use as much organic as I can. I use ONLY real butter, and ONLY real vanilla-extract.
To make oat flour, you can put your whole oats into the blender. Works great. Or you can buy oat flour. Be careful when getting brown rice flour as one brand I saw packed their white rice flour exactly the same. Florida crystals makes great organic sugars, but sometimes the brown sugar can dry. The brown sugar needs to be soft; if it isn’t, just put a small piece of fresh bread in the sealed bag for a day or two and the sugar will be just fine. Finally, most cinnamon is really cassia and you probably won’t find that on the label of any major brand (they don’t have to tell you). Real cinnamon is lighter in color and more delicate in flavor than cassia. Either one works for me. Oh, and the eggs. I try to use good eggs, but I read a while back that the “free range” eggs can come from chickens that aren’t really free range – at least not the way you or I would probably think of free range.
Finally, you can cut the amount of sugar in half in just about any cookie recipe, but the cookies will usually be a lot more crumbly. You can use all brown sugar in this recipe and omit the ½ cup of white sugar, but, I have found that the cookies are then crispier than I like.