Cooking Journey: Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

 

If you read my previous blog post you'd have seen (read? I suppose? I mean I guess I included photos but--nevermind...) IF you read my previous blog post you'd have seen that my peanut butter brownies were somewhat of a flop. They came out okay and looked visually appealing (for the most part) but they did not stack up to other brownies I've tasted in the past. Speaking of the past, THOSE BROWNIES ARE IN THE PAST! We are here TODAY with a BRAND NEW RECIPE! Okay, actually, it's quite the opposite, this is my favourite, tried and true chocolate chip cookie recipe (this time I added oatmeal). So, this really is a recipe I've been using and baking with for a LONG time, lots of trial and error but I finally have perfected this cookie. I mean, am I WRONG? Just look at the photo of those cute, little oaty, chocolatey chip morsels. Okay, I'm boasting now.

This recipe comes to you from the Klutz "Kids Cooking: A Very Slightly Messy Manual" which I received as a gift, as a child, and LOVED. Does anyone remember the INCREDIBLE collection of activity books Klutz offered? I sure do... Anyway, this particular recipe I have been using for... More than 20 years, easily. I LOVE it. It is definitely the best chocolate chip cookie recipe I've ever used or come across. Other recipes and cookies are good but, this one trumps them all. Ew, I don't even wanna use that word. These cookies OUTRANK them all. There we go, thats better. The only thing I did differently this time, was I added oats! I realize "traditional" oatmeal cookies are about 90% oats but, I kind of just added my own spin on these cookies. This recipe is called "Darrell's 'Forget-the-Cookies-Just-Give-That-Batter" Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe." I did a quick search and it looks like this cook book is still available on Amazon.ca but it's weirdly VERY expensive? The only copy I can find of this cook book is $54.77. If you're interested in purchasing this book, you can do so HERE!

Sorry for the shitty quality, I grabbed this from the Internet! 

Without further ado, let's jump into it! 

One of the most important things about this recipe is: DO NOT OVER BAKE! There is nothing worse than a very crunchy cookie (unless that's your thing, then thats cool, no hate.. but...) I feel like the ideal chocolate chip cookie, or any cookie, for that matter, should have a little bit of chewey-ness to it. 

The first thing you wanna do is melt the butter! 

Similar to the process we used when we made the peanut butter brownies, we're going to melt the butter and then add both sugars to the mixture! Both the white and brown sugar are going to be added to the butter mixture. 

After mixing the sugars together with the butter, set the pan aside to let the butter mixture cool slightly. While this is cooling, we're going to mix together some dry ingredients! We're going to combine the flour, baking soda and salt in a mixing bowl. After the dry ingredients are sifted together, we are going to crack the egg into a bowl and beat it lightly with a fork, then add the vanilla to the egg and mix. 

Once the egg is mixed with the vanilla and I combined the dry ingredients, I set the dry ingredients aside and added the egg mixture TO the butter/sugar mixture. Stir gently to combine. Usually I just mix them together with the fork I used to beat the egg. 

This is the part where I start to get excited.. As you could have assumed from the title of this recipe, this cookie batter is incredibly delicious and irresistible. I really could eat an entire bowl of just the cookie dough. I don't need to make the cookies, the dough will suffice. However, we are not stopping at the dough today, we are making REAL, FULLY BAKED COOKIES! 

The next thing I did was added the butter/sugar mixture to the dry ingredients! Slowly, mixing it as I added the wet to the dry. 

I haven't even added chocolate chips yet and it LOOKS INCREDIBLE. Sorry, I get really amped for cookies. 

As I mentioned previously, I added my own little spin to this recipe and decided to add 1/2 cup of oats. Nothing special, nothing fancy, literally no name whole wheat oats. I did a little bit of research to find out when to add the oats as I wasn't sure if they'd be combined with the dry ingredients or if they'd be added at the end with chocolate chips. A quick google search led me to the answer which is the latter! You add the oats at the end with the chocolate chips, so that's exactly what I did! I was worried adding too many oats would cause the cookies to be very dry and I didn't add any more wet ingredients to offset the amount of oats I added, so I proceeded with caution and opted for only a 1/2 cup of oats. 

After adding the oats and the chocolate chips, I mixed everything together, of course. The final step is prepping your baking sheets and placing 1" cookie dough balls onto it! I love using parchment paper, I feel like it's a fool-proof solution to just about anything. I personally find this stops the cookies from browning too much on the bottom and, of course, it aids in the removal of the cookies from the baking sheet. 

Another hot tip for this recipe is to ensure you really try and make the balls of dough not larger than 1". Because these cookies cook for such a short period of time, if you make them any larger, they really don't cook all the way through the way they should. I've tried making these cookies larger and cooking for slightly longer but I honestly find they're better smaller and baked for less time. You're more than welcome to do whatever you'd like but I am sharing what I find works best for this recipe! The cookies are also perfect mouthfuls of chocolatey chip goodness. ALSO, making them smaller means there's more cookies, so... Win/win if you ask me. 

As I mentioned above, I cook these for no more than 10 minutes. Set a timer, take them out when the timer goes off! 

I never use to utilize a cooling rack, I never saw the importance of it until I started using one. This recipe calls for the cookies to stay on the cookie sheet for 5 minutes after they come out of the oven, I know that cookies continue to bake a little bit when they stay on the cookie sheet, so this is important, too. Previously it never really occurred to me that removing the cookies after 5 minutes ensures they don't continue to cook. This leads to cookies being crunchy on the bottom or over-baked! Putting things on the cooling rack also allows the airflow to surround the cookie and not just cool the top of it! 

Adding the oatmeal to these cookies was a fun switch up and twist on the original recipe. You realistically could add all kinds of different chocolate chips and modify this recipe further but, as the saying goes K.I.S.S. (keep it simple, stupid). Which is exactly what we did here today! I really love these cookies, they come out chewy in the middle, just the right amount of crunch, and golden brown. They're perfect bite-size/two-bite cookies. Always a crowd pleaser. 

The entire recipe is below! 

1/2 c. butter

1/2 c. brown sugar

1/2 c. white sugar

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1 egg

1 1/8 c. flour

1/4 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1 bag (6 oz.) chocolate chips

1/2 c. walnuts (opt.) <---- I added oats instead of walnuts! (when I make this recipe normally, I don't add walnuts) 

Bake at 375F for 10 minutes. 

Cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before moving to cooling rack.

Let me know if you try this recipe out! You can also read about what I made last week HERE! 

xo