These were cranberry-raisin oatmeal cookies.
I adapted a
recipe from King Arthur Flour's website. I halved all ingredients and further halved brown sugar but doubled all spices. I soaked dried cranberries and raisins with dark rum about 30 minutes. For nuts, I used walnuts. The recipe had been very easy to follow until when I dropped balls of dough onto the first baking sheet according to the recipe. The recipe told me to leave about 2" between them. I assumed the dough was going to spread out. My question was, "Is that true?" I have encountered a similar situation several times before; I left balls and they didn't spread out, which turned out big cookie balls.
I checked the baking sheet in the oven just 5 minutes before the cookies were supposed to be done. I saw the dough balls still being balls disappointedly. I opened the oven door, flatted them down with a long metal spatula, and continued cooking for the last 5 minutes. The cookies looked flat but dense. Oh, well.
For the second patch, I flatted the dough balls before I placed them in the oven. After baked, they looked naturally flat.
Actually the cookies in either case were great. Perhaps the first batch was slightly tougher than the second, but the cookies were chunky and chewy with dried fruits, nuts, and oatmeal, so such a little toughness wasn't noticeable anyway. The cookies tasted wonderful. They were nicely warm-spiced and had a caramel-like deep flavor.
J liked the cookies and apparently he didn't see the difference between the first and the second batches. After all, all cookies were flatted anyhow.
