Ethan suggested that his favorite cookie to make this time of year is an oatmeal cookie with golden raisins and currants. That sounded lovely, especially because I love oatmeal cookies and because Europe is the land of many currants. So, off to the local grocery store I went to stock up on cookie makings. Later, in the kitchen, T and I agreed that the following items were interchangeable:
-brown sugar to raw sugar
-baking soda, baking powder to baking pulver
-raisins to little dried wine grapes, currants, golden sultanas, candied ginger, dried apricots
-walnuts to walnuts, pecans, and pumkpin seeds
-1 dry cup to 1 mostly full coffee cup
-quick-cooking oatmeal to meusli
-vanilla to weird off-white, vanilla-smelling fine powder that neither of us had seen before
-nothing to chopped dark chocolate

…and so we followed the recipe in terms of technique, made our substitutions, and we ended up with some pretty seriously delicious cookies. Of course they spread all over the pan and came out one big thin cookie, and of course there’s a weird little pumpkin seed surprise every once in a while, but the double-toasted goodness of the meusli is freaking delicious. They’re worth a try! I used the Joy of Cooking recipe (given the substitutions, we should probably be referring to the cookbook as the Gladness of Roasting,) and meusli with oat flakes, corn flakes, and wheat flakes. If you don’t have meusli, maybe just toast the oatmeal first?
Ethan was right about the currants – they’re way more flavorful than plain raisins, and the golden raisins seem to absorb more liquid (hint: the liquid in these cookies is butter.)