In my senior year of high school I got this wild baking idea: I would make chocolate chip cookies for the varsity football team during their playing season.
Every Thursday evening after our family’s supper I would gather all my ingredients in preparation for an evening of baking. Then I’d painstakingly cream butter and sugar together, add the eggs and vanilla, sift dry ingredients then combine all these ingredients together - by hand. Gently I would drop spoonfuls of dough onto baking sheets and spend what seemed like hours baking. After they came out of the oven I would set them on racks to cool. Then I would count them out by the dozen placing them in perfectly even rows.
Not one family member was to touch them until I knew the end count.
Finally, I would dole them out into bags. When Friday morning arrived I’d proudly take those bags to school and hand them out to “my” team.
My well intentioned weekly project got the better of me when finally after several games one of the guys came up to me and said, “Beth, we love you and the cookies you make for us but we can’t eat them before or after the game because it might make us sick.”
So, with a bittersweet memory and the craving for sugar and chocolate I give you a fail safe recipe for the best Super Bowl Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie.
Here’s to the end of football season but not my cookie making pleasure!
Ingredients
1 stick + 6 Tbls of unsalted butter, soften to room temperature
3/4 C Turbinado or Raw Cane sugar
1/2 C granulated sugar
3 large eggs - whole
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 C all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon powder
1/2 tsp ginger powder
3/4 tsp kosher salt
3 C old fashioned oats
2 C chocolate chips
Process
Pre-heat oven 350F
Cream butter and sugar together in a large bowl.
Add eggs, vanilla and stir to incorporate all ingredients. It does not have to be perfectly smooth. However, I used a whisk which helps break up the bigger pieces of butter and or sugar.
In a separate bowl sift together flour, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger and salt. Then gently add into liquid mixture and stir to combine.
With a spatula scrape the inside of the bowl to incorporate all the flour mixture into the liquid. Once thoroughly mixed add your old fashioned oats and chocolate. Fold all ingredients into the other.
Using a 2” wide ice-cream scoop, fill it with dough and level the top off. Place measured dough onto a parchment papered half baking sheet; 2 rows of 3.
Place into the preheated oven, center of the middle shelf and bake for 12 minutes. Open oven, rotate sheet once (back to front), close oven and bake for 5 minutes. Take cookies out of oven, set aside to cool. Repeat until the cookie dough is gone.
Eat with abandon!
Yields 21 - 3 1/4” cookies.
Tips
*I used 60% cocoa bittersweet chocolate. It lends a more distinctive intense chocolate flavor to the cookie itself.
*Since these chocolate chips were larger I did a quick chop to make them go further.
*Notice (see pictures above) how I used 3 different tools to mix; wooden spoon, whisk and spatula. I DID make this batch of cookies by hand and I wanted to show you the progression of mixing tools which was contigent on how I had to mix and what would work best as the mixture progressed. Obviously you can use a standing mixer like a KitchenAid. It does make life easier.
* I took some major liberties by adding & exchanging some ingredients. And you can too! I did follow the basic oatmeal cookie recipe you’ll find on the inside top of the Quaker Oats Oatmeal container.