Spice and Curry: Oats Carrot and Raisin Cookies

Summer vacations have started here and with that daunting task of keeping busy my DD have also started. Outdoor activity is essential for the over-all development so is some in-door activities.
Yesterday we were out in park. She kept throwing her boomerang and also towards me mischievously , although it was always changing it's path.Sometimes ending where it started. Well at this age I can’t be like her, can I? , jumping and catching at the same time, going ecstatic about a boomerang- but that didn’t stop me from picking it up from the ground and then throwing it back, even if that means I have to run couple of steps or jump high/bent down to get hold of it.

This summer term- she started her tennis class. Now she is pestering me to play tennis with her, I can’t recall when the last time I picked up tennis racket, was perhaps while staying in US as we had a community tennis court in our apartment complex and a swimming club also... Oh! And have I said that I was very bad at sports at school level. DH on the other hand is quite active; he still plays tennis.I wouldn't say I am a couch potato now, but it is something to do with the sedentary lifestyle we have now. There is car to take care of our mobility and then there is home-delivery for grocery. I have chucked out these two from my list- so every time I go out; I walk and carry grocery to bring it back home. I rarely get into bus unless we have to travel to central part of city or carry heavy grocery. Something which I like to do .Given a choice to run over a treadmill in a closed gym, I would prefer any day walking out even if it is raining. But this makes me tired, and when I get tired I can sleep well. For a good and sound night sleep, physical tiredness is required. And if you are emotionally tired then that’s the difficult part. As emotional tiredness can drain out all the positive energy from you. Anyways there are better means to take care of your emotional fatigue and physical fatigue, find out what are those means and try to stick to those means. It’s always better to work on these means rather to swallow tablets or pills for that matter.

This is what she has been making this weekend. Her origami crafts are improving that I would like to say. Last time when I visited our local library, I picked up a random book about origami- crafts. It has clear stepwise instructions with great visuals/pictures. Now if a book has great visuals then it becomes appealing to kids and if it’s about crafts then its much better.DD is excited to try other animals. Well we have making it in -- past also
If you want to make this easy craft – then there are many other websites where instructions are free and can be easily downloaded.

After all this banter now to real stuff of the recipe. Whole meal flour or Atta has many health benefits and I don’t need to re-iterate that. Since I am currently guest-hosting - " Cooking with whole grains" - I thought it would be nice to share a cookie recipe with you all. I have made them many eons back, and this was lying dormant in my drafts, finally this is its day today.

Oats gave some additional nutrients and raisin and carrot added more volume to this recipe. If you want chewy textured cookies then leave it little thick and if you need a crisper cookie then roll out thin.A thumb rule I like to follow while baking cookies.

Oats Carrot and Raisin Cookies
Recipe requirements
3 cups of whole meal flour/Atta
1 cup of oats
3 medium size carrots grated
½ tsp of baking soda
½ tsp of baking powder
1 egg
½ cup of sugar
¼ cup of butter
½ cup of California raisin

Method
Clean the carrots and shave the skins off with potato peeler. Then grate them with the help of mandolin.
Mix whole meal flour and oats well in a big mixing bowl.
Now in a separate bowl, mix in butter and sugar well. It would be great if butter is taken out from fridge at least half an hour before mixing with sugar. This way it’s easy to work with them.
Now add in 1 egg to it. Mix well butter sugar and egg.
Preheat the oven at 170 deg C.
Now add baking soda and baking powder to the whole meal flour and oats mixture.
Mix the butter +sugar+egg mixture with the whole meal flour and oats mixture. Add in raisin and grated carrots.
Keep mixing it with the help of your hands. This will form semi-soft dough.
At this point if you wish you may refrigerate the dough for couple of hours.
Take out and divide the dough in equal proportions. Now roll out a large disc from it and with the help of cookie cutter cut out cookies.
Transfer the cut out disc to cookie baking sheets. Bake it for 8-10 mints.
Take out and let it cool a little bit.
If you ant crisp cookie, roll out the dough little bit thin so that the cookies turn out crisp. Anyways whole meal cookies turn out crisper than the usual flour cookies.
I had some left-over , so put it out to freeze, this came out nice and more crisper ,even I made them after 2-3 days again.

Note-
I have used a drinking glass to cut out the cookie shape. For a large round, you can even use a steel katori/bowl to cut out the cookie shape.

This cookie resembles quite like digestive cookies as it’s made with whole meal flour and oats. And I have tried to make it low –calorie as per using sugar and butter. Cooking oil can be used in place of butter for making these cookies. If you are looking for sugar cookie type of thing or texture then this is perhaps not the right kind of recipe for you.