Recipe of the Month: March 2008
Best-Ever Oatmeal Chocolate-Chip Cookies
2 Sticks (1 cup) butter, room temp.
3/4 Cup granulated sugar
3/4 Cup dark brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. kosher salt
2 Cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 3/4 Cups rolled oats (“Old Fashioned” oatmeal)
1 12-oz package semi-sweet chocolate chips
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Cream the butter, either by hand or with a kitchen mixer. Add sugar and brown sugar and continue to cream vigorously. Add eggs, one at a time, creaming ruthlessly after each one. Add vanilla extract and salt. Cream. Sift flour and baking soda into the bowl on top of creamed wet ingredients. DO NOT STIR. Add the oats and chocolate chips. Stir unaggressively, just long enough to incorporate the ingredients. Spoon dough onto cookie sheet in roughly 2-tablespoon increments, rolled into golf-ball-sized mounds. Bake for 8-10 minutes. For best results, remove from oven when they still look just a bit undercooked — when they just begin to get a bit of brown on top. Let them cool for just a few minutes. Eat lots and lots of them, hot and gooey, with cold milk.
General tips. Let the butter soften before creaming. This takes patience. DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, MICROWAVE TO FACILITATE SOFTENING OR ENGAGE IN ANY OTHER CULINARY NONSENSE WHICH MIGHT POTENTIALLY RESULT IN THE BUTTER’S MELTING. The general idea for stirring/creaming is: use as many strokes as possible before adding the dry ingredients (everything from the flour on) and as few strokes as possible once the flour is added. You will be tempted to let them overcook. Do not succumb to such temptations. If they look a bit undercooked when you take them out, by the time they have cooled they will be perfect. If they already look browned enough when you take them out, they will be slightly overcooked by the time you start eating them. Once they are out of the oven, take them off of the baking sheet and put them on a rack to cool. This is an incredibly delicious, incredibly unhealthy recipe, so be warned. Also, the dough itself is decadently good, but resist eating too much of it. These cookies are worth the wait.
Yours truly,
Cinnamon J. Scudworth
This takes patients
What kind of sick, cannibalistic cookies are these?
Comment by Ivan Wolfe — March 28, 2008 @ 3:26 pm
I agree that the secret to chocolate chip cookies is creaming the butter and sugar. If you want to work with something that is easier and more fool-proof (though a disaster from a nutrition standpoint), I recommend butter-flavored Crisco. I always let me standing mixer do the hard work with creaming the butter.
Comment by BTD Greg — March 28, 2008 @ 3:33 pm
This sounds delicious. Oatmeal chocolate chip is my favorite type of cookie.
Comment by Keri Brooks — March 28, 2008 @ 5:12 pm
I’m going to try this recipe tonight. As an extremely experienced chocolate chip cookie connoisseur, I am eminently qualified to test it. One question though: How is this different from the recipe on the Quaker Oats box? It looks the same.
Comment by MCQ — March 28, 2008 @ 7:14 pm
I could probably replace those chocolate chips with raisins, toss in some cinnamon – and have exactly what I want.
Total bliss and happiness.
Oatmeal raisin cookies are the best.
Comment by danithew — March 28, 2008 @ 8:55 pm
Danithew is right. Oatmeal-raisin FTW.
Comment by Supergenius — March 28, 2008 @ 8:56 pm
Oatmeal-raisin cookies are for the godless.
MCQ, I’ll have to check and see if the recipe is the same as the QO box. All I know is that it’s a modification of the cookies my dad made when I was growing up (which was his own modification of his mother’s recipe). But regardless of the different sites of access to this recipe, it is superb. And following my tips is an important ingredient to enabling them to fill the full measure of their creation.
Comment by Scudworth — March 29, 2008 @ 9:59 am
I just got through making about 120 toll house cookies for my kids’ classes at school (I’m doing a presentation on “America” and what’s more American than chocolate chip cookies?). The recipe above looks just like the toll house one with the exception of adding the oatmeal and reducing the flour by 1/4 cup. Perfectly divine. When I get back into cookie making mode again I’ll definitely make these — with the addition of raisins!
Comment by meems — March 29, 2008 @ 10:46 am
Anyone who would choose an oatmeal raisin cookie over oatmeal chocolate chip would drink bathwater.
Comment by MCQ — March 29, 2008 @ 12:40 pm
Agreed on the don’t-eat-all-the-dough part. The worst case of the winds I’ve ever had was the night we kids decided to eat the oatmeal-chocolate chip dough instead of baking it.
Comment by Chad Too — March 29, 2008 @ 4:55 pm
Scudworth,
So after reading this recipe yesterday I thought it sounded delicious so I went home and promptly baked a batch. It is true, the best ever. Holy crap, these were delicious and now I’m kind of sick from eating so many. (I decided to use an imported French butter just to mix it up a little bit and I don’t know if it was the difference, but I’ve seriously never had oatmeal cookies this good.)
MCQ,
Fully agree about the superiority of oatmeal chocolate chip over raisin with cinnamon. No comparison.
Comment by Rusty — March 29, 2008 @ 7:54 pm
you oatmeal-chocolate chip philistines. Peasants!!
Comment by Supergenius — March 30, 2008 @ 11:39 am
I quit making cookies about five years ago because they always turned out F&G (flat & greasy). I found my culinary courage and tried this recipe today. I followed the instructions exactly and they turned out fantastic. I loved the dough and my husband was thrilled with the cookies.
Comment by Abby — March 30, 2008 @ 10:47 pm
PS – I have to agree with MCQ & Rusty – no raisins!
Comment by Abby — March 30, 2008 @ 10:59 pm
Ohhhh, I now have stomach ache from eating too much dough. I may be about to die, but it will have been well worth it. The first sheet is in the oven.
Comment by MCQ — March 31, 2008 @ 10:32 pm
The kids ate too much dough too.
Comment by MCQ — March 31, 2008 @ 10:37 pm
Awesome. I think it’s the texture that makes these cookies great. Ever so slightly crispy on the outside, perfectly chewy on the inside. I love them. It must be all the creaming that did it, because the ingredients are the same I always use. I have to confess though, I didn’t use kosher salt. Would they be even better if I did? That’s hard to imagine. It may be for the best. Achieving that level of perfect cookiehood could cause a fatal distortion in the space-time continuum. Or cookie rapture. Either way, you lose your cookies.
Comment by MCQ — March 31, 2008 @ 11:12 pm
SG, these cookies could convert even you, a deeply closeted raisin sucker, to come over to the rich, creamy dark side.
Comment by MCQ — March 31, 2008 @ 11:17 pm
I always knew Supergenius to be a raisin-sucker.
Comment by Rusty — April 1, 2008 @ 6:25 am
Anyone have a good brownie recipe?
Comment by Abby — April 1, 2008 @ 9:24 am
Abby, yes. Try these.
Comment by Supergenius — April 1, 2008 @ 10:54 am
Supergenius – Thanks I’ll give it a try! I suspect you currently are or must have been a culinary artist in a former life.
Comment by Abby — April 1, 2008 @ 11:10 am
Perhaps you might consider changing it to a recipe every other week? I need a new recipe to try this weekend!
Comment by Abby — April 11, 2008 @ 1:03 pm