Yum! Oatmeal Raisin Chocolate Chip Cookies!

It might seem like a little thing, and I suppose it is, but sometimes the little things make all the difference. My grandma would soak the raisins [for whatever recipe she was making] in the appropriate liquid for that recipe to plump them up all nice and juicy. To this day I like raisins, but in any given recipe that calls for raisins, they have got to be soaked first. Trust me, just try this:

Mix up the eggs and vanilla first and stir in the raisins, then let the mixture sit for about 45 minutes before you begin mixing up your cookies.

Combine 2 sticks of butter (1 cup) with 1 cup of sugar and 3/4 cup light brown sugar.

Mix in 2 1/2 cups unbleached flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, and 2 teaspoons baking soda.

At this point the mixture appears really dry but its okay. Just keep going.

Add in your raisin/egg/vanilla mixture. Mix well. (that's the mixture of 3 eggs, 1 teaspoon vanilla and 1 cup of raisins that you let sit for a while before you started mixing everything all together)

Add 2 cups of oatmeal (the regular old fashioned box) and 1 bag of Nestle milk chocolate morsels. (not the semi sweet ones)

If you like big cookies, these work really well. I use a stoneware baking sheet and roll up about a tablespoon of cookie dough for each cookie so that only about 6 cookies fit on the sheet.

In my convection oven, I set the temp for 350 and bake for just under 10 minutes. I like mine a tad on the underdone side, so just watch to see them get lightly browned, not over done or they'll be too hard.