Oatmeal Cookies with Dried Apricots and White Chocolate

December in Nebraska is gray. Not white yet, not the dramatic winter of Christmas cards, but gray: gray sky, gray roads, gray fields stripped of their harvest, gray light that makes four-thirty feel like midnight. I drive through it and my headlights are on by four p.m. and the world outside the windshield is a study in monochrome and I think about how my dad Larry does this every day, year-round, and has done it for forty years, and I understand something about him I did not understand when I was young: the road is not just his job. It is where he makes sense to himself. It is where the gray does not bother him, because the cab is warm and the engine is steady and there is always a destination, even when the road is long.

I made my first batch of Christmas cookies this week, which is early for me but Josie has been asking since the day after Thanksgiving. Sugar cookies, the classic ones with frosting, and I let all four kids decorate them because Christmas cookie decorating is one of those family activities that sounds magical and is actually chaos covered in sprinkles. Tyler made reasonable-looking trees. Amber made elegant snowflakes. Justin put so much frosting on each cookie that they were structurally unsound. Josie ate more sprinkles than she applied, which is age-appropriate and also a choking hazard.

The cookies are not good. I want to be clear about this. They are beautiful, they are made with love, they are edible in the technical sense, but they are not good cookies. They are vehicles for frosting and sprinkles and family memories, and that is their purpose, and I accept their purpose even though my standards for baking are higher than what four children with unlimited access to food coloring can produce.

I also made gingerbread, the real kind, because I wanted at least one Christmas cookie that I could eat without regretting my life choices. Ginger, cinnamon, cloves, molasses, butter, flour. The dough is dark and spicy and smells like December should smell. I cut them into people and trees and stars and baked them until they were just slightly soft in the center, because hard gingerbread is a travesty and I will not participate in it. These are for the adults. The sugar cookies are for the children. The division is fair and non-negotiable.

The sugar cookies belonged to the kids and the gingerbread disappeared faster than I expected—Justin ate two before they were fully cooled, which I saw happen and chose not to address—and by Thursday I still wanted to bake something for myself, something that felt considered and adult and worth the effort. These oatmeal cookies with dried apricots and white chocolate are exactly that: chewy in the center, a little sweet, a little tart from the apricots, and complicated enough in flavor that a four-year-old would find them uninteresting, which is precisely the point.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 12 min | Total Time: 30 min | Servings: 48 cookies

Ingredients

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
3 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
1 cup dried apricots, coarsely chopped
1 cup white chocolate chips

Instructions

Preheat oven. Heat oven to 350°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.
Cream butter and sugars. In a large bowl, beat softened butter, granulated sugar, and brown sugar together with a hand mixer or stand mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.
Add eggs and vanilla. Beat in eggs one at a time, then add vanilla extract. Mix until fully incorporated, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed.
Combine dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. Gradually add the dry mixture to the butter mixture, stirring on low until just combined—do not overmix.
Fold in oats, apricots, and chips. Using a wooden spoon or rubber spatula, fold in the rolled oats, chopped dried apricots, and white chocolate chips until evenly distributed throughout the dough.
Portion and bake. Drop rounded tablespoons of dough onto prepared baking sheets, spacing them about 2 inches apart. Bake for 10–12 minutes, until the edges are set and lightly golden but the centers still look slightly underdone. Do not overbake—they will firm up as they cool.
Cool on pan. Let cookies rest on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack. This allows the centers to finish setting without drying out.

Nutrition (per serving)

Oatmeal Cookies with Dried Apricots and White Chocolate — The Cookies I Made for Myself