The Perfect Oatmeal Raisin Cookie?

The woman said these are the "perfect oatmeal raisin cookies."  OK, I took this as a challenge!  And you know I love a challenge!  This recipe is from The Farmer's Wife blog which I happened to stumble upon today.  I made a few changes to her recipe which I will note below:

Ingredients: makes roughly 16 cookies

1/2 Cup Margarine, softened** (I used 1/2 cup unsalted butter)
2/3 Cup Brown Sugar, packed
1 Egg
1/2 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
3/4 Cup All Purpose Flour
1/2 teaspoon Baking Soda
3/4 teaspoon Cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon Nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon Salt** (I omitted the salt)
1 1/2 Cups Old Fashioned Oats
3/4 Cup Raisins

Directions:

In your mixer blend the butter, sugar, egg and vanilla until smooth.

Then in a large bowl whisk together the flour, baking soda, spices and salt ** (see note above - I omitted the salt).

Add flour mixture to the butter mixture and mix on low-medium speed until combined. Then add the oats and raisins and mix well.

At this point chill the dough in the fridge for at least 30 minutes, up to 1 hour.

Once mixture is chilled, spray your cookie sheets with non stick cooking spray, and using a 1 1/2 tablespoon scoop  and drop scoops of cookie dough about 2 inches apart on your sheets (I rolled my dough into balls - guess I thought it would look neater!)

Bake at 350F degrees for 10-12 minutes, until golden around the edges and slightly golden on top. Let cookies cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to wire rack

NOTES:

The first round of cookies that I baked, I made smaller "balls."  Those cookies seemed to look better. Where the second round were bigger "balls", the cookies seemed to "run" a bit and looked "crispy" on the edges. A few of the bigger "ball" cookies fell apart. So smaller is better!

Taste - good.  I do think she needs to adjust the cinnamon and nutmeg a bit more - at least, for my taste.  They are still very good.

Perfect?? Maybe not, but pretty close.  They are very chewy and moist - the way an oatmeal raisin cookie should be.   I will have to wait to see what the "resident expert" (my husband - the oatmeal raisin cookie lover) thinks. 

Resident Expert's Opinion:  Pretty darn good!!  He ate about 4 cookies in the first minute or two!  So this is definitely a keeper recipe.  He said he didn't care about the difference in the shapes - they all tasted the same :-) 

Enjoy!!