Dried Cherry-Walnut Oatmeal Cookies

I know bloggers (eek, that sounds weird) aren’t suppose to apologize for not posting for one or two weeks, but really, I’m sorry. I can’t use the excuse that insanely demanding classes and a packed college social schedule have taken over my life, because frankly, even though I swear I do have friends and I try kind of hard in my classes, I have had quite a few moments when I could have certainly written a blog post.

No, instead I’m going to blame the fact that I lack luxuries I took for granted at home—namely, internet that worked and a camera that was created past 2002. Yet I still have a cookie recipe, a fantastic one at that, to present to you today. I made it at the beginning of the summer back when my parent’s pantry had that rare opportunity of having dried cherries and actually being able to not eat the whole bag within two days. And so I made these cookies, a recipe my mom has made a few times before that I absolutely love.

They’re soft, chewy, have a bite, and the sweet background of brown sugar is punctuated by tart dried cherries. My boyfriend Waylon called them “killer,” and when I sent a gallon-sized Ziploc bag full of them to my brother in Wisconsin, he said he had to ration them out to check himself from eating them in a single day. Let me make a quick note that, neither my boyfriend nor brother are “sweets” people, so this is in fact fairly big, and the cookies are in fact fairly awesome.

I feel like this is a pretty standard recipe that can stand up to quite a few alterations: substitute another type of dried fruit or chocolate chips if you like the whole chocolate-oatmeal combination. Also feel free to substitute the nuts, or leave them out as the recipe originally intends. However you enjoy them, good luck keeping your hands out of the cookie dough and keeping your friends and family long enough away from them for you to enjoy some yourself. These cookies are dangerous.

Dried Cherry-Walnut Oatmeal Cookies      

Adapted from Nordstrom’s Entertaining at Home Cookbook

These make a lot of cookies. I’m not quite sure how much, but I’m going to guess somewhere in the range of 3 dozen, more or less. I mean, look at the picture above where it’s practically overtaking my KitchenAid mixer bowl! So by all means halve the recipe if you feel comfortable doing that. 

3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon kosher salt
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups brown sugar, packed
2 large eggs
1 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 cups old-fashion rolled oats
1 1/2 cups dried cherries
3/4 toasted walnuts (or less or more as wanted), chopped

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Sift or whisk together flour, baking power and soda, and salt.

Using an electric mixer, beat butter, brown sugar together until mixture is creamy and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating 30 seconds after each egg. Beat in vanilla extract. Gradually add dry flour mixture into creamed mixture. When flour mixture is incorporated, stir in oats and then cherries until just combined–don’t overmix.

Line a couple of baking sheets with parchment paper. Drop dough by tablespoonfuls about 3 inches apart onto parchment-lined baking sheet, keeping remaining dough refrigerated until ready to bake. Bake 9 to 11 minutes, or just until cookies puff and are lightly golden brown all around. Do not overbake. (Cookies will flatten and set up a bit more as they cool.) Slide parchment from baking sheet onto wire rack to allow cookies to cool completely.

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