Welcome Homeschool Minute Readers!

We’re so happy you’ve stopped by! Here’s a recipe we just love that Hal’s dad developed many years ago, and below that is a great Scripture illustration you can do at the same time. Your children will never forget it!

Hal & Melanie

Papa Harral Young’s Oatmeal Raisin Cookies (with Variations)

 1 cup of butter or shortening, soft, but not melted

1 cup sugar

1 cup light brown sugar, packed

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 eggs

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

3 cups raw oats

1 cup raisins (or see variations)

Before you get started, you might want to do the illustration with your children below!

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Lightly grease pans. Cream butter and sugars together, then add eggs and vanilla until light and fluffy. Sift together flour, soda and salt and add. Mix until moistened well. Stir in raisins. Roll into balls, using about a tablespoonful for each. Place two inches apart on cookie sheets. Bake 12 to 14 minutes or until golden brown. Let stand one minute, hten remove to racks. Eat a couple hot with cold milk, then cool the rest and store in an airtight container.

Variations: Soak raisins in hot water while you get started for softer fruit. Substitute butterscotch or chocolate chips or M&Ms for raisins. Substitute chopped dried fruit of other kinds for raisins.

 Flour, Sugar, & the Blessings of God

Making this recipe with your children gives you a great opportunity to teach them a principle of cookery and a principle of the word of God, too.

Sugar should be scooped into the measuring cup and leveled with a spoon.

Brown sugar should be packed into the measuring cup.

Flour should be sifted, or stirred well, and lightly spooned into the the measuring cup.

Sit down at the kitchen table with white sugar, brown sugar, flour, some measuring cups, a stack of paper plates, some tablespoons, butter knives, a sifter, and a kitchen scale if you have one.

First each of you scoop out a cup of sugar, level it with a knife, then pour it out onto a paper plate. Everyone should have just about exactly the same amount. You can just observe that or prove it with a kitchen scale. Pour the sugar back into its container – except what you need for the recipe!

Then each of you scoop a cup of brown sugar. Depending on who packs it and who just scoops, you are all likely to end up with different amounts of sugar. You can probably just see the difference, but again, weighing it will show it well.

Show the children how to pack brown sugar into the measuring cup and try again. Note how this time, everyone has the same amount! Add the right amount to the recipe, then return it to its container.

Now for the flour! Explain that flour is a lot more compressible and “packable” then even brown sugar is. Have everyone measure out a cup of flour. After they measure theirs, you sift yours, then spoon it lightly into the cup to measure it. You should have a lot less than anyone else. Then say, “Actually, flour is used in the Bible as an illustration of how God blesses us.”

Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you.” 

Let’s try it! Measure a cup of flour by just scooping it into the measuring cup, then using the flat of the spoon, press down on the top. You’ll need to add more! Add more, then shake it by tapping it down on your paper plate. Add more! Repeat pressing and shaking until you can’t get any more in the cup. Then you’ll start piling it on top and pressing and shaking until it is running over. Now dump all that out and compare it to the sifted cup measure. Wow! Weighing the two will really drive this lesson home.

When God gives to us in response to our giving, he really gives generously! So should we.  

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Thanks to Melanie Martinelli  and Bill Ebbeson for the photos!