It's Your Lucky Day!

...because I am going to share a wonderful heirloom recipe with you for Fanny's Heirloom Chewy Raisin Pecan Oatmeal Scotchy Cookies.  Fanny was my Grandma.  She was a great great cook.  I have a lot of her recipes and have tried many of them.  I like to think I got most of my cooking skills from watching her during summer visits to her house.  She raised six children (5 boys and 1 girl, my mother), lived on a farm in central Wisconsin.  She kept a great big garden and canned and stored most of her food for her family.  They lived through the depression and had to get quite industrious to feed themselves.  Some of her best dishes were her pizza's, cinnamon rolls and home-baked breads (not during the depression, these came after the depression in more abundant times.  They had only potatoes and jelly beans during the depression so-told).  She made so many wonderful things its hard to pick just a few.  She was adopted, lived in an orphanage run by nuns for the first few years of her life.  In her adult years she eventually found her birth brothers and sisters who were also adopted and split up.  One sister became a sister.  I guess when you are raised by nuns that's a natural choice.  Anywho, I do digress.  There is so much more I could say about my Grandmother and perhaps I will devote an entire blog post to her.  These cookies are so good I couldn't quite decide what to name them.  Here were my choices:

Liz's FAMOUS Chewy Oatmeal Cookies
Fanny's Chewy Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
The Most Bestest Oatmeal Cookie Ever
Heirloom Oaties
Chewy Oatmeal Cookies (original name before I changed it, I can do that you know because its my families SECRET recipe.  It my creative license OKAYEE?)

I finally settled on this name because it captured the essence.  

Now onto the good stuff

Fanny's Heirloom CHEWY Raisin Pecan Oatmeal Scotchy Cookies

1 cup sifted flour

3/4 tsp soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon (I used 1 1/4 tsp of cake spice which contains both cinnamon and nutmeg and other spices.  To me its easier than measuring out each separately)

1/4 tsp nutmeg

3/4 cup shortening soft (I used butter flavored Crisco, I think it adds something)

1 1/3 cup firmly packed brown sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

2 cups uncooked oats

1 cup raisins

Optional:

1 cup of chopped pecans

1 pkg of Nestles butterscotch chips

Sift together the dry ingredients. Add shortening, sugar, eggs and vanilla.  Beat until smooth (about 2 minutes).  Stir in oats and raisins.  Drop by heaping tsps onto greased baking sheet.  Bake in preheated oven (350) for 12-16 minutes.  Makes approximately 3 1/2 dozen.

TIPS:  I set the timer for 6 minutes and then switch the pans on the shelves in the ovens.  Don't overcook.  12 minutes is about right even though the recipe calls for 12-16 minutes.   The original recipe called for raisins only.  The addition of pecans and the butterscotch chips are mine.  All of those items are optional.  You can also use cranraisins but I'd omit the butterscotch chips if you do.

TIP OF THE CENTURY:  When storing your cookies, did you know that if you put 1/4-1/2 piece of bread in your cookie jar with the cookies they will stay as fresh and chewy as first day you baked them?  Try it.  It works

Second TIP OF THE CENTURY:   Use good baking sheets.  Who knew?

BEFORE (See my new cookie sheets from Costco?  I have to tell you...  invest in quality baking sheets (these were only $14.00 for three, one half sheet and a lid was included).  All these years I thought my signature style of BURNT was all my fault.  It was just how I rolled (no pun).  Turns out my cookie sheet were shit.  This batch of cookies .... PERFECTION

AFTER

Touch them and you die.  ROFL and shhhhh don't tell anyone this recipe because it's SECRET.