Black Raspberry Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies

     The best part about summer is how you can quite literally walk outside to pick your own fruit. Yesterday, we invaded the local black raspberry patch and picked all the ripe ones we could find. (Trust me, the purple stains on our fingers confirmed that we were busy.) While most of the picking was done bush to mouth, we did end up with about 6oz of berries or about 3/4 cup. 
    The question became, what to do with the berries? We were severely tempted to just eat them raw, but the bakers in us saw an excuse to break out the bowls and wooden spoons. We tossed around a few ideas, like making black raspberry muffins, before deciding that the only thing to be done was to make cookies. However, we were then faced with the decision of what type of cookie. Should we use a sugar cookie base? A chocolate chip cookie type dough? Shortbread? And then it came to us, if there is one food that instantly makes anything baked something delicious, it would have to be oatmeal. We would make black raspberry chocolate oatmeal cookies. (Why chocolate? The real question is WHY NOT!) 

Here is just a small sample of our batch

 Isn't the blueish color awesome?

The dough base was taken from Better Homes and Garden oatmeal cookies, with a few minor adjustments. 


Ingredients: 


3/4 cup butter (we did a mixture of 1/2 cup butter, 1/4 cup margarine) 
1 cup packed DARK brown sugar (while the recipe doesn't specify, we all know dark is better than light)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon (It is not optional in our book, and we tend to make it a heaping 1/2 tsp) 
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 3/4 cup all purpose flour
2 cups rolled oats 
(we added about two extra tablespoons of flour and oats to combat the extra liquid from the chocolate and black raspberries) 
3/4 cups black raspberries (the fresher the better)
1 cup chocolate chips melted (we may have added a few extras beyond that... chocolate is delicious)


Directions: 


Heat your oven to 375 degrees.

Put all the butter and margarine (minus one tablespoon with which to melt the chocolate) in a mixing bowl and beat it on medium speed for about 30 seconds.

Add the brown sugar, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and cinnamon to the butter, and beat until all mixed.

Add the egg and vanilla and beat until combined.

Add the flour slowly, by the end of the 1 3/4 cups you will be using a wooden spoon and good ol' fashion man power to mix the ingredients.

Add the 2 cups rolled oats and stir thoroughly.

Slowly and gently fold in the black raspberries (they will break and stain the batter a cool blueish color).

Melt the chocolate either via microwave or double boiler. (We just left ours in a bowl on top of the oven in the dorm, and it melted while we mixed everything else. Sometimes college cooking has its perks) Stir in the liquid chocolate until it is evenly distributed through the whole batter. It might have a strange color, but trust us, it will taste good.

 Depending on the size of the cookies you make, they will take anywhere from 8-12 minutes. When they are done, you will see the chocolate in the batter start to almost create a cracked glaze on the top (like what you see on brownies) and they will look pretty solid.

Allow to cool, and then munch! Half our batch disappeared right after baking them from all of our friends stopping by to see "what made the hallway smell so good."