the Amazing Chocolate Chip cookies :)

Here is the recipe (complete with my notes on ingredients), and then a photo essay of sorts showing the mixing and forming of aforementioned Amazing Chocolate Chip Cookies.

5 cups old-fashioned rolled oats (but they won't explode if you use the quick cooking kind)
8 ounces semisweet chocolate (like a package of chocolate chips)
1 pound (yes, 4 sticks!) unsalted butter, softened
2 cups sugar
2 cups light brown sugar
4 large eggs (have you ever seen a recipe call for tiny eggs? Or monstrous ostrich-sized eggs? They always seem to use "large eggs".)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract (As opposed to a whole vanilla bean pod.)
4 cups all-purpose flour (Have you ever tried no-purpose?)
2 teaspoons baking soda (Yes! The stuff everyone allegedly keeps in their freezer to keep it fresh!)
2 teaspoons baking powder (This would be the stuff you don't put in your freezer, normally.)
1 teaspoon salt (I actually use salted butter and skip the salt.)
24 ounces chocolate chips, the largest and best-quality possible. Chocolate chunks are really good. (Chocolate in general is good, so the bigger the better!)

Okay. So, the first thing you do is unbury your food processor, or dig out your blender. Then you grind up the oats and the 8 ounces of chocolate as fine as you can.


Then you mix up the butter, sugar, eggs, and vanilla extract, in a bowl of some sort.

Then you mix up the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt (if you're using it), and add that in.
This is where the batter gets stiff. If you just have a handheld mixer, you should probably do this by hand (plus, by hand is fun). And you add the oats/chocolate mixture to the wet stuff.

Then you add the 24 ounces of chocolate chips/chunks.

Preheat the oven to 375° Fahrenheit, and get out your cookie sheets. You now have two options: 1) line the sheets with parchment paper, or 2) grease it regularly.

Then, make gigantic cookie balls, each one about the size of two golf balls. I don't actually know how big a golf ball is, let alone two, but that is what the recipe says. I just make them really big. You are supposed to end up with 24.

Then you stick them in the oven, one sheet at a time, and bake them for 11 minutes, reversing the pans halfway through. After 11 minutes, they won't look done, but you have to take them out anyhow. They'll have little cracks on the top, and if they are brown on the bottom, they've baked too long. Let the cookies cool on the parchment paper rather than on cookie racks because they will drip down through the racks. If you didn't use the paper, let them cool a few minutes.

They dry out, so store them in plastic bags, preferably in the freezer, but they don't last long enough around here to warrant doing that.

Enjoy!