The Oatmeal Cookie Experimentation

I have useless far too long. I am sick and tired of being off my feet. Today, I started getting a baking bug (I don't get it often but I get it occasionally). The California FRG sent an email asking people to donate recipes for a cookbook and I really want to do that so I got online and started looking for soemthing  fun.

My kids used to eat Instant Oatmea. It was somewhat healthy and filling and I was thrilled. But they have now decided they are morally oposed to eating oatmeal...eh, what can you do, huh? The thing is I went out and bought a huge box of instant oatmeal. Long story short? I looked to see what I could do with instant oatmeal.

I actually found an oatmeal cookie recipe taht I could the instant oatmeal.

This was the orginal recipe...

1/4 cup of sugar
1/4 cup of flour
1 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder
1/2 cup of margerine
3 packages of instant oatmeal (any flavor)

Preheat oven to 350
Mix in medium size bowl
Grease baking sheet
roll mixture into balls and kind of flatten them
Place on baking sheet, bake for 15 minutes at 350

The recipe said if you were using instant oatmeal use less sugar (because instant oatmeal has sugar). I did as I was told and this was my finished product...

They looked like oatmeal cookies and they tasted like oatmeal cookies but ehhh... They weren't bad, let me start there, they were in fact edible but they were just a little bland.

So, back to the drawing board...I decided to alter the recipe. Here is what I did:


1/4 cup of sugar
1/4 cup of flour
1 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder
1/2 cupbutter
3 packages of instant oatmeal (any flavor)
Dash of vanilla extract
1/2 tablespoon of cinnamon sugar


Preheat oven to 350
Mix in medium size bowl
Grease baking sheet
roll mixture into balls and kind of flatten them
Place on baking sheet, bake for 15 minutes at 350

The only changes I made were using butter instead of margarine. I added Vanilla extract and cinnamon sugar. Last time I used half the recommended sugar because I was using the instant oatmeal and that is what it said to do, this time  I used the full recommended amount.

here is my finished product:

Well, ...ok, not as pretty as the first batch but they tasted really great. The few changes I made actually made a big difference.

I had a good time and enjoyed my results. I am going to try a few more recipes and see what I like the best. But this is a contender.