So we went to Maine for the third time since this #didnthavetohappen plague started, and I came back with both my second bout of Covid (not counting the Paxlovid rebound from my first)* and a pretty great new cookbook. We picked up the latter after wandering into the old mill building where we found Rabelais bookstore packing up before its closing and moving online and were invited in to poke around and wound up meeting with the owner, a social media friend who wound up showing us some of his most awesome collectibles (the first African-American cookbooks, from like 1861, cuz white plantation overseers had no idea how to cook) and then handing off a copy of Maine Centennial Community Cookbook.
And I never felt more snobbish than I did on flipping through and post-iting almost nothing but recipes for sweets. Winters are just not so hard here in the food capital of the world that I would need to make a chowder of vegetable-bin forgottens (although I might). To give the book a fair shake, though, I started with the most tantalizing cookie recipe and was amazed to find it was both the easiest and the most happy-making one of maybe the last three years of churning out the results of two recipes every week (one new, one safely tried/true) for a church lunch program. The raisins kinda gave me pause, but it turns out those in combination with the oats and chocolate chips almost elevated a peanut butter umami (one downside of baking for strangers: George Washington Carver’s invention is discouraged in case anyone has a groundnut allergy).
Mike’s Famous Damariscove Oatmeal, Raisin and Chocolate Chip Cookies
Heat the oven to 375 degrees. Cream 1 1/2 sticks well-softened butter with 1 1/2 cups brown sugar. Beat in 2 eggs + 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla. Combine 1 1/4 cups flour with 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1 heaping teaspoon cinnamon and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Beat into the batter, then stir in 2 3/4 cups old-fashioned oats and 1 cup each raisins and chocolate chips. (Original recipe advises using a strong wooden spoon or your hands, but I’ve learned that mixing all the “hard” stuff together before you start blending it in lessens the struggle.)
Original recipe also says to “drop blobs of dough about 1 1/2 inches round onto an ungreased baking sheet, smooshing them down just a little; leave space for cookies to expand during baking; this recipe will make about 2 cookies sheets-full.”
I used a scoop, didn’t smoosh after the first panful and got nearly three sheets-full.
I also make a second batch of cookies every week in case my adventure into the unknown fails. Suffice to say that our second freezer has leftovers of both right now.
*(I actually hate to think I may have infected Mainers with a disease I am convinced I picked up at poll-worker retraining, where I spent four hours in an unventilated room with mostly unmasked and many coughing people. My consort did not get sick, but then he hadn’t just had a wisdom tooth pulled and did not have a mouth full of stitches.)
FITTOC 