Date Filled Oatmeal Cookies

With the help of my husband whose specialty is date squares we put together two recipes in one to make these tender date filled oatmeal cookies. He made the filling usually made for date squares or matrimonial cake and I made the oatmeal cookies. It turned out to be the perfect marriage of sweet filling and chewy, perfectly textured cookies!

Ingredients for Oatmeal Cookies:

3/4 cup butter, at room temperature

1/2 cup white sugar

1 cup lightly packed brown sugar

1 egg

2 tbsps water

2 tsps vanilla

2/3 cup flour

3/4 tsp baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

3 cups rolled oats

 

Cream butter, sugars, egg, water and vanilla together until fluffly. Combine the flour, baking soda and cinnamon and add to the butter mixture. Stir in the oats. Scoop onto parchment lined baking sheets leaving 2" between each ball. I used a 1" scoop here. Gently press just to flatten the dome of the ball.

Bake at 350°F for 12-15 minutes.

Ingredients for Date Filling:

1 lb pitted dates, chopped

1/2 cup hot water

1/4 cup orange juice

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 tsp lemon juice

zest of 1/2 orange

1 tsp vanilla

 

Combine everything except the vanilla in a saucepan. Cook over medium heat until the dates soften and the liquid is absorbed. Remove from heat, stir in the vanilla and cool. Or you can even prepare the filling the day before. 

Assembly:

Turn the cooled cookies upside down and pair them off with equally sized partners. Even though I used a scoop the cookies were not all the same.  Evenly distribute the date filling on half the cookies. Start with about 1 tsp each at first then go around and add more.

Place another cookie on top of the filling and they're ready for snacking! Store in air tight containers.

Makes 28

And here's the link to our Date Squares (Matrimonial Cake):

https://www.hotandcoldrunningmom.ca/2014/05/date-squares-matrimonial-cake.html 

Follow hotandcoldrunningmom on Pinterest. You can scan the pincode seen here with your phone if you're on a desktop. If you're on a phone just screenshot it, go to the Pinterest app, click camera. Then instead of taking a pic use the option to use one of your photos. Click on the screenshot you just took and go right to my Pinterest profile where you can follow me 🙂