Cookies for Breakfast

I swear, I will eventually cook something sore substantial than desserts! I really will, I swear! But until then, one more batch of cookies. My housemate left for a grueling trip around Europe a few days ago. She will be visiting 3 countries, giving 4 talk and participating in a conference, all in under two weeks. Phew! I wanted to make her some cookies for the trip, so that she has some comfort food (or food, period) while hopping from plane to plane, or working on her talk late into the night in a hotel room on the other side of the pond. I started with her favorite "Cookies a la Grammy" she makes with the dried cherries her Grammy sends her for her birthday every year, and tweaked, and then tweaked it some more:

"You can have them for breakfast" Cookies
1 C butter (2 sticks)
1/2 C brown sugar
1/4 to 1/2 C white sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 C flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 C rolled oats
1+ C dried cranberries
1/2+ C pecan pieces
1+ C chocolate chips
zest of 1/4 lemon (or less, or none)

Beat butter and sugar for 3-4 minutes, until fluffy. Add eggs, vanilla and zest, and beat some more. Combine flour, salt and baking powder and add to the wet mixture. Finally, stir in the oats, dried cranberries, pecans and chocolate chips. Feel free to change the nuts, chocolate chips and dried fruit ratios (or omit some), as long as they all add up to ~2 1/2 cups. These will go well with dried cherries (definitely skip the lemon zest) or walnuts or white chocolate chips too. Drop teaspoonfulls (or ice-cream-scoop-fulls) of batter on a baking sheet about an inch apart. Bake at 10-12-15 minutes at 350F until bottoms are lightly brown. Let them cool on the sheet for a few minutes before transferring to a rack to cool completely. They are really soft when warm (this is apparently not a sign that they are underbaked) and will stay quite soft. Makes ~3 dozen cookies.

I took some to a BBQ at a friend's house last night and everyone loved them. So did my housemates. I have to agree, they are pretty good too - I had one with my beer tonight ;) And I may have a couple for breakfast tomorrow too - after all they have all the things I usually have for breakfast - oatmeal, pecans, cranberries, chocolate chips - in them already.

PS. For the original "Cookies a la Grammy" recipe increase the brown sugar to 1 C, the white sugar to 1/2 C, the chocolate chips to 1 1/2 C and instead of cranberries and pecans add 1 1/2 C of dried cherries. We usually cut down on the sugar though, they are too sweet for our taste.