Chocolate Chip Cookies are sort of like Thanksgiving Turkeys. Everyone wants to be famous for them and cooks often keep their secrets close to the chest. I was surprised to look back in my Desserts & Sweets Recipe index and see that I had not posted a Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe. Although I am not 100% loyal this recipe, it is my standby and the one I make most often.
This recipe came to me via email, practically back when email was just invented. The print out is in my recipe binder and I just checked it to find along the bottom: America Online: Friday September 11, 1998. Funny, that was when that date didn’t mean anything out of the ordinary.
Perhaps you have seen this email chain. A woman claims that during a lunch at Neiman Marcus, she asked for the recipe to the delicious chocolate chip cookies. The server says it will be two-fifty to buy the recipe. She agrees, only to find that her bill includes a $250 charge, not the $2.50 charge she had envisioned. To get her money’s worth, she emails the recipe to anyone and everyone she knows and asks them to pass it along.
Well, I don’t know whether there is truth to it but the recipe is delicious and with the dozens of times I have made it, I have helped the angry woman get her money’s worth!!! The cookies are particularly different due to the ground oatmeal and shaved chocolate bar added in.
This recipe yields a ton of cookies. So, I would suggest cutting it in half for a normal sized batch or make it all and freeze the dough or give some away! I recently schemed up a new cookie gifting idea: Put wrapping paper around small oatmeal containers or Trader Joe’s coffee containers and stack up cookies inside. (Paper in photo is from my favorite, Snow & Graham.)
“Neiman Marcus” Cookies
2 cups butter
4 cups flour
2 tsp soda
2 cups sugar
5 cups blended oatmeal
24 oz. chocolate cips
2 cups brown sugar
1 tsp salt
1 8oz. dark chocolate bar, grated
4 eggs
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp vanilla
3 cups chopped nuts (walnuts or pecans)
Measure oatmeal and then blend in a blender or food processor to a fine powder. Cream the butter and both sugars. Add eggs and vanilla. Mix together with flour, oatmeal, salt, baking powder and soda. Add chocolate chips, shaved chocolate nuts and stir until combined. Roll into balls and place two inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet or parchment paper lined cookie sheet. Bake for 10 minutes at 375 degrees. Makes between 50-80 cookies.
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