Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies (23)

 

This recipe is the 2015 King Arthur recipe of the year. Who doesn't love a good chocolate chip cookie? They are so quick and easy to bake. I've marveled many times at the number of variations that can come from basically the same ingredients and mixing technique. I was excited to give this one a try. 

Right off the bat, we see a small deviation from the standard cookie recipe. The oven is preheated to 325, as opposed to the standard 350. Longer, slower cook time.  Interesting. 

Pretty standard method from here: I beat room temperature butter with brown and white sugar. Like my go-to cookie recipe, this one uses more brown sugar than white. I love the caramel-like flavor this gives a cookie. 

Next, a whole egg and egg yolk went into the mix, along with the vanilla. I'm wondering why the recipe dropped the white from the 2nd egg. Lowered the protein, while keeping the fat up. Hmmmm. 

The bowl was scraped, and in went all the dry ingredients at once--flour, oats, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Side note about these ingredients: I've never made a chocolate chip cookie that calls for BOTH baking powder and soda. Typically, it's just soda. I've never thought about it before, but when you use baking soda, you must have an acid and a liquid present for it to activate. What is acidic in a cookie? Baking powder makes so much more sense here. Baking Powder is baking soda + an acidic compound, so all it needs to activate is a liquid. I bet you didn't know your baked goods were carefully measured science experiments. 

OK back to the cookies. It only took about a minute to mix in all those dry ingredients, before I threw in the chocolate chips.  This is an insane amount of chocolate chips.  It calls for 18 ounces (3 cups). Your standard bag of chocolate chips from the store is between 10-12 ounces. I decided to stick with about 2 cups. And that still seemed like a lot. As I was scooping it onto the cookie sheets,  there were some cookies that looked like scoops of chocolate chips, held together with a bit of dough. 

The recipe says to bake until LIGHT golden brown, not the standard brown you may generally see on cookies. In fact, it says they should only be brown around the edges and a little shiny (read: raw) in the middle. This took 15 minutes in my oven. 

When they first came out of the oven, they were big, puffy, and looked amazing. Then, as they cooled on the pan, they sunk down. A lot.  The chocolate chips became the high points on an almost totally flat cookie. I had to let them rest on the pan for 10 minutes to set up before I could move them to the cooling rack, because they're so lightly cooked and flimsy. 

Some of you are reading this thinking,  "that sounds like the most amazing cookie ever." Others are reading it thinking, "that sounds terrible". It's OK. Some of us like our cookies chewy. Some of us like our cookies cakey. Some of us like chocolate chip cookies no matter what the texture. If you like a slightly crisp exterior, with a thin, chewy interior, this is the cookie for you. 

I did not notice the oats in these cookies at all. If I'm making an oatmeal cookie, I like the oats to be a major flavor and texture note. Also, they were a bit crumbly, and difficult to eat.  Probably because of all those chocolate chips breaking up the structure. I can't even imagine if  I'd put in all 3 cups of chocolate chips. I mean look at those pictures. All chips! Again, some of you are thinking that is amazing, but I like a bit more cookie than chip in each bite. Those are my only detractors for this cookie.

Overall, a very delicious cookie that I'm sure my family will be requesting many times in the future. 

 Scores (out of 5): Breanna-4. Dustin-4. Michael-5. James-5. Andrew-5. Total 23/25

https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/chocolate-chip-oatmeal-cookies-recipe