Recipe: Big Batch Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

While I love my mom's chocolate chip cookie recipe, I also REALLY like this one.  Adding oatmeal to a cookie is almost always a good move, if you ask me! 

I got this recipe from my friend "Feather" in 1991 when a group of us lived in an awesome little apartment building on Adams Point near Lake Merritt in Oakland, CA. She called them "Mrs. Field's Chocolate Chip Cookies" - who knows what their provenance is, but they are definitely GOOD!

This makes a HUGE amount of cookies - great for a crowd! Or, freeze small balls of cookie dough in order to bake fresh cookies without the fuss later.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups butter                
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 cups brown sugar                        
• 4 eggs                    
• 2 teaspoons vanilla        
• 4 cups flour (I always substitute 2 cups of whole wheat flour for two cups of the white flour)
• 5 cups oats (powdered in a blender)
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 24 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips (a 1/2 bag of toffee brickle chips is a fun substitute for about 6 ounces of the semi-sweet ships)
• An 8-ounce Hershey bar, chopped (I often substitute 8 ounces of milk chocolate chips)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Cream together the sugars and the butter in a LARGE bowl.  Add the eggs and vanilla, mix well.
3. In a separate bowl, mix together all of the dry ingredients EXCEPT the oats.
4. Blend the oats in a blender until they become powder. Add to the other dry ingredients.
5. Add the dry ingredients (including oats) to the wet ones one cup at a time.  Mix between additions.
6. Add the chocolate chips and the chopped Hershey bar to the cookie dough.
7. Drop on ungreased cookie sheets; bake 10 minutes.

~Mamie "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro!" (Hunter S. Thompson)