Cookie of the Month: White-Chocolate Cherry Oatmeal Cookies

So I wasn't quite pleased with last month's Raspberry White-Chocolate Oatmeal Bars, thinking them a bit too sweet for my taste. (Astonishing, I know, that I'd find anything "too sweet.") I'd originally wanted to try using white chocolate chips in an oatmeal cookie, so when I had a little more time I went to my Better Homes & Gardens cookbook and headed to the drop cookie section. Their several variations on the Basic Drop Cookie included an oatmeal version, so I adapted it to get the following recipe:

¼ cup butter or margarine
¼ cup shortening
½ cup granulated sugar
¼ cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 tablespoons milk
1 cup all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon baking soda

1 cup quick-cook oats
½ cup dried cherries
½ cup white chocolate chips

Beat butter and shortening with electric mixer for 30 seconds. Add sugars and beat till fluffy. Add egg, vanilla, and milk; beat well. Add flour, soda, and oats to beaten mixture; mix well. Stir in dried cherries and white chocolate chips. You can see the resulting mixture is a little goopy, but full of good stuff.

Next drop spoonfuls of batter two inches apart onto a greased cookie sheet. You can see I was pretty generous with my spoonfuls, because I have a little scooping device that is perfect for drop cookies. A heaping scoopful gives me the right amount (1-2 tablespoons) of batter, and a little squeeze of the handle slides all the batter from the scoop onto the sheet. It's much easier than the old two spoons technique, since I only need one hand to use it.

Anyway, once you've got your batter scooped, bake in a preheated 375F oven for 8 to 10 minutes. Remove and cool on a wire rack. Eat!

And here's what they looked like after they came out of the oven and cooled a little bit. They were nice and chewy, which is how I prefer my cookies, and the mixture of flavors—oats, white chocolate, and cherry—was nice. But the balance was off; the cookies weren't very dense, and the oats seemed overpowered by everything else. So again (sigh): just a little too sweet.

Final rating: nom nom nom (three of five noms).

For now I'm giving up on white-chocolate combinations. Who knows what I'll come up with next month?