Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

This recipe comes from Travis' girlfriend from high school's family. How's that for a connection? We call them Nebeker oatmeal cookies. These are fantastic, pretty much my favorite oatmeal cookie ever. A few things, #1, I hydrate my raisins before I throw them in the dough. This consists of me taking about 1 and 1/2 cups of raisins, putting them in a medium size bowl, filling the bowl mostly full of water and popping it in the ol' microwave for about 5 minutes. I always hydrate before I start making the cookies, then the raisins have time to cool down, soak up that water and become plump little beauties. #2, Just for cookies in general, I cream the sugar, butter, eggs, vanilla for 5 minutes. Seriously. I set my timer for 5 minutes, and let my Kitchen Aide work some magic. EVERY cookie will benefit from the extra "creaming" time. Thought I'd share that wonderful tid-bit.

1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup shortening (I resisted my natural impulse to use butter, and used butter flavored Crisco, love how they turned out)
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 tbsp hot water
2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp soda
2 cups oatmeal (I use quick oats, never use instant oatmeal)
tons of raisins

Cream together sugars, shortening, eggs and vanilla

Add the tablespoon of hot water

Combine dry ingredients, flour, salt, and soda and add them to the creamed mix. Mix just long to have it sorta pull together, then add the oats and raisins. Then mix thoroughly to combine.

Bake at 370 (odd temp, I know. I'm just going off the recipe card, folks and its always worked for me) for 10-12 minutes. Enjoy!