Oatmeal Drop Cookies

These Oatmeal Drop Cookies reminded me of cookies my mother made for her grandchildren.  All of us, not just her grandchildren, would dip our hands into her cookie jar when we visited.  It is it is a collective memory we share of her. 

It’s an old-fashioned oatmeal cookie, soft and chewy, and uses basic ingredients. It reminds me of oatmeal, cozy, tasty, flavour packed. 

I found this recipe in a little recipe book of my grandmothers.  I have been trying them and this one so far is my favourite.  I don’t know what it is about oatmeal cookies that I love because the ones I remember from my childhood were the least favourite that my mother made.  Whenever she made them, I was disappointed and wished for peanut butter cookies instead, my favourite.  Today, however, I would make an oatmeal cookie over peanut butter any day.

These have nuts, raisins, and cherries and just so much flavour.  It really is oatmeal in a cookie.  The addition of the cherries – I mean really, 6 maraschino cherries – give the cookies a little pop of colour.  Not a lot, but enough to elevate them up from ordinary, and it’s one of the things I really like about them. 

The original recipe did not call for vanilla but I added it and found it made a difference.  I suspect that the maraschino cherries were meant to be the flavouring but I think there would need to be a lot more for it to make a difference and visually, I think 6 cut fine is just enough.  I was very tempted to add a teaspoon of cinnamon, but then it would be a different cookie.  They are quite good just the way they are.

Of course, you can omit the cherries if you don’t have them, or replace them with glacé cherries, or apricots, depending on what you have on hand.  I haven’t tried either so if you do, let me know down in the comments if you substituted something for the cherries and how they were.