Secrets to A Good Ole Chocolate Chip Cookie

For the love of the Chocolate Chip Cookie!

I’m not saying my Chocolate Chip Cookies are famous but I get quite a bit of compliments on them.

At my church I lead a group called Random Acts of Kindness, we’ve done random acts to places like The Mansfield Bus Barn aka school bus drivers (all 375 and a few staff) to little care bags for Texas Oncology. It’s just something to brighten someone’s day or to say hey, we see you.  I had no idea they had that many bus drivers!  They were our very 1st act of Kindness and we are thankful for what they do.

So a couple of years ago we made these chocolate cookies for every volunteer in our church almost 400 volunteers!  We spread it out through  the summer by areas like the nursery volunteers to the parking crew.

We made them fresh of course or rather I made them ahead of time and froze the dough balls.  The group came to my house, I baked and they put them in sacks and put tags on them.

Not sure how long I have been doing this but for at least 10 years I have added about a 1/2 cup to 1 cup of instant Oatmeal.  I buy my Oatmeal at Sam’s club in a box with 2 large bags inside.  You want to get  instant, with the instant you don’t even know it’s there but it give the cookie this great texture without even anyone knowing it’s in there.  Then the KEY to the cookie is scooping out all the dough onto a cookie sheet, I line with parchment paper then flash freeze them and put  them in a ziplock bags. It does something to the butter and creates this cookie that has body…like the oatmeal gives it invisible texture and the frozen dough makes them beautiful in a way.  

I store the ziplock bag in the freezer for whenever I want to make some cookies and I often double the recipe to me I’m like might as well.  You can also pop the dough balls in the fridge for about 30 minutes if you are using them right away.  Time will be more like 10-12 minutes to bake since they will not be frozen.

I also under bake them just a tiny bit… like I do 13-14 minutes because I always bake in a frozen dough ball form,  I pull them out of the oven when they have that beautiful light brown color and a light crispy edge. They stay really soft I guess that’s a good description, you get to know when to pull them out of the oven.

Chocolate Chip Cookies 

1 c real butter, softened 
3/4 c sugar

3/4 c brown sugar

2 eggs 

1 tsp vanilla

2 1/4 cups of flour

1tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1 cup (instant) oatmeal

1 bag of chocolate chips - (2 cups)

Preheat oven to 375

Cream butter then add sugars, beat in eggs and vanilla.  In a seperate bowl, combine flour, salt and baking soda.  Gradually add flour to butter/sugar mixture and oatmeal , add chocolate chips.

Bake for 10-12 minutes….  if using frozen dough 13-14 minutes 

See how the chocolate chips kinda gather in the middle because of the oatmeal and being frozen…you can’t even see the oatmeal and most don’t even know it’s in there!