Maple Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

I'm home and back to baking again.  Saturday I made chocolate chip cookies to share with our neighbor who watched our house while we were away.  Those went fast.  Yesterday I pulled an old standby from a book I bought twenty years ago - Great Cookies You Can Bake: 365 Fabulous Cookie Recipes for Every Day of the Year* - and tweaked it.  (Because I can rarely leave a recipe alone.)  Here's what I came up with:

Maple Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

1/2 cup margarine
1 egg
3/4 cup maple syrup
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 cup old-fashioned oats
3/4 cup golden raisins

Preheat the oven to 400F.  Cover baking sheets with aluminum foil to facilitate clean-up**.  (Original recipe said to grease the sheets, but I hate cleaning up greased sheets.)  In a large mixing bowl, cream margarine until smooth.  Beat in egg.  Beat in maple syrup.  In a separate bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon.  Mix half the flour mixture into the wet ingredients.  Stir in oats.  Gently stir in remaining flour.  Stir in raisins.  Drop by rounded spoonfuls onto sheets.  Bake 10-12 minutes or until edges of the cookies turn a nice golden brown.  Cool a few minutes on the sheets before removing to your cooling area of choice.  (I use paper towels***.)

* The book the link goes to is a different version but it's basically the same book.

** I always cover my cookie sheets with foil.  I haven't had to wash a cookie sheet after baking cookies in years - and then only when the foil tears. 

*** These recipes always seem to say 'transfer to wire racks' for cooling.  I'm sorry, but I can't afford wire racks, don't have the space to store them, and really don't see the point.  We've cooled our cookies on either paper towels or clean dish towels since I was a kid and have never had a problem. 

Note:  These are not super sweet cookies, so they make a nice change.  If you're looking for sweet, throw some butterscotch chips in these suckers.  That might help.