The Only Chocolate Chip Cookies

So my friend Devon sent me a great recipe book called "Beat This" by Ann Hodgman. So far I have only made the chocolate chip cookies. I have gotten really good reviews so you must try them! Now I must warn you, this is not a quick recipe to make, but if you have the time, it is well worth it. It is also a large recipe...so you could cut it in half if you wanted.

5 cups old-fashioned rolled oats

8 ounces semisweet chocolate

1 pound (4 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

2 cups sugar

2 cups light brown sugar, packed

4 large eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

4 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

24 ounces chocolate chips

3 cups chopped nuts (optional)

I've made some of my own comments throughout the recipe...they are in BLUE.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Line four large cookie sheets with parchment paper (you should actually use the parchment paper...it makes a difference).

In a food processor, grind the oats until they turn into a fine powder. (You can also do this in a blender, working in small batches.) Coarsely chop the chocolate and add to the oats, processing until the pieces, too, become as fine as possible. This may take a long time, but the finer the mixture becomes, the better the cookies will be. Set the oat-chocolate mixture aside.

Here are the oats and chocolate in the food processor. It'll take a while to grind everything down. Have patience.

Here's what it should look like when you are done processing the oats and chocolate.

Cream the butter and sugars together in a large bowl. Add the eggs and vanilla and mix well. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Then gradually beat the flour mixture into the butter mixture.

If you're using a heavy-duty standing mixer, add the oat mixture and beat it in. If you're using a hand-held or lightweight mixer, work the oat mixture in with your hands. Mix thoroughly.

(this is a very thick mixture that was tough for even my Kitchenaid, but it could handle it)


No matter what kind of mixer you have, do the next step with your hands. Work the chocolate chips (and nuts if you are using them) into the dough.

This recipe will make 48 large cookies. Make balls of dough about twice the size of golf balls (yes this is big, but it's okay) and place 12 balls on each cookie sheet, spacing evenly.

Bake one cookie sheet at a time in the middle rack in the oven. Bake the cookies for 11 minutes, reversing the sheet halfway through the baking. When you've baked them for 11 minutes, remove the cookies from the oven. The cookies will not appear done at that point, but take them out anyway. (The surfaces of the cookies will be covered with small cracks, but inside the cracks, the cookies will still look wet.) If the bottoms are brown, you've baked the cookies too long.

Let the cookies cool right on the parchment-covered cookie sheet rather than transferring to racks; if you transfer while they're still hot, they will fall apart.

Once the cookies are cool, put them into plastic bags and store them in the freezer. Kept at room temperature, they dry out too fast. (I skipped this step and it was fine.)


Final product--


Now I have made 2 batches of this recipe. The first time I made it I made the dough ahead of time and refrigerated the dough. If you do this, I recommend that you do not try and work with the dough when it is too cold. This is a really thick dough and when it is too cold it is very hard. The good thing about refrigerated dough is that the cookie did not flatten out too much in the oven, so if you like a thick cookie you might want to try this. Either way, the texture of the cookie is very stable, but soft, not crunchy.

The cookie on the left was refrigerated, the one on the right was not.