Do You Have Any Cookies?: "

I love the fact that resident's can choose what they want to mix into their cookie dough bag.

If you want to bake the cookies immediately after mixing up the dough go ahead and heat your oven to 375°F. Or you can freeze the dough for later use.

In a large bowl combine the brown sugar, butter, egg and lemon peel. Beat until creamy. The lemon peel adds a pleasant taste to these cookies. It is especially good when raisins and/or nuts are stirred-in. If you don’t have any lemon on hand or just don’t care for a citrus flavor in your oatmeal cookies, it’s okay to leave it out.

Now add the oats, flour, baking powder and salt.

You can use quick oats or old fashioned oats in this recipe – both will work fine. Quick oats have been cut into smaller pieces. Don’t use instant oatmeal in baking recipes because the oats have been cut even finer and are not suitable for baking. Old fashioned oats are on the left and quick oats are on the right in the photo below. You can see the difference I described. I like old fashioned oats because they result in a more hearty texture.

Beat on low until well mixed.

If you are planning to bake the cookies right away choose the ingredients you would like to add and stir them in by hand. For this batch I stirred-in white chocolate chips.

If you want to freeze the dough for baking later just place it in a plastic resealable freezer bag. I often double the recipe and then divide the dough into 3 or 4 freezer bags. Squeeze out any excess air, label each bag and store them in the freezer.

When the time comes to bake the cookies, remove a bag of dough and defrost it. If you know ahead, you can let the dough defrost overnight in your refrigerator. If the baking is more impulsive you can defrost it in the microwave. I set my microwave on the Defrost setting and watch it very carefully. You don’t want to melt or start to cook the dough. Now decide what you want to stir-in. Just about anything goes. Here is an assortment of stir-in ideas including chocolate chips, raisins, butterscotch chips, chocolate-coated candies, white chocolate chips, nuts, etc. Feel free to select a combination of goodies too.

An easy way to “stir-in” the goodies is to simply add them to the defrosted dough in the freezer bag.

Now just knead the dough through the bag to mix in the goodies.

No mess, no fuss and you are ready to bake the cookies. You can always leave some of the dough plain, too. They make a great oatmeal cookie!

Drop dough by tablespoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets.

Bake for 12 to 14 minutes or until lightly golden brown.

Let the cookies cool 1 minute before removing them to a cooling rack.