New Recipe: Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Last night, the lovely and charming Alice came over for a brief baking session. In her honor, I forewent my usual Weight Watchers recipes in favor of something totally, incredibly unhealthy. In fact, I have no idea what the Weight Watchers points are, and really I think that's probably for the best.

This was my first experience baking with oatmeal, and I was a little nervous, but Alice assured me that it was an easy ingredient, and it turned out she was right. The cookies were very easy to make (as most cookies seem to be), and they turned out absolutely delicious. We used this recipe, but substituted chocolate chips for butterscotch ones.

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies: Makes 48 cookies (or, in our case, 18)

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup (1-1/2 sticks) butter or margarine, softened
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 cups quick-cooking or regular rolled oats, uncooked
• 1-3/4 cups (11-oz. pkg.) HERSHEY'S Butterscotch Chips [We used about six ounces of chocolate chips instead.]
  

Instructions

1. Heat oven to 375°F.
2. Beat butter, granulated sugar and brown sugar in large bowl until well blended.
   
3. Add eggs and vanilla; beat well.
4. Combine flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt; gradually add to butter mixture, beating until well blended.
   
5. Stir in oats and butterscotch chips; mix well. [We got confused and mixed the chips and oatmeal with the other dry ingredients before adding them to the butter mixture. No harm done. We were just mixed very gently when we combined the ingredients and everything turned out fine.]
6. Drop by heaping teaspoons onto ungreased cookie sheet. [Try multiple tablespoons per drop. What can I say? We like our cookies big. Also, we only had two cookie sheets at our disposal.]
   
7. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until golden brown. Cool slightly; remove from cookie sheet to wire rack. Cool completely.

The verdict: Oh my god SO GOOD. For all the calories, they should be, and yes, yes they are. I could happily eat these forever. Too bad my waistline wouldn't agree.