Cookie Monsters

My sister-in-law Liz wrote on her blog recently about making cookies with her nearly-two-year old son. It got me thinking about mine and Annie's cookie making exploits. Annie LOVES making cookies together. The thrill of beating eggs, dumping flour into a moving Kitchen-Aide, sitting on the counter . . . there are few things that bring her as much joy as making cookies. Except maybe baths. And ladybugs. And legos. And playdoh. And stuff that is pink. OK, so it doesn't take a lot to make her deliriously happy, but I know making cookies is up there on the list. Greg and I both have great childhood memories of making cookies. We were recently sharing our similar experiences. "We'd double the recipe," Greg remembered fondly. "Us too!" I said. He continued, "and we'd half the chocolate chips." "What the crap!? You used less chocolate chips than it calls for? We'd double the recipe, then double the chocolate chips again, just for good measure! You poor deprived children!" (Knowing and loving my in-laws as I do, I'm positive this was the only form of blatant child abuse going on in their home during Greg's formative years. Still, I am surprised he turned out as well as he did. Oddly enough, he does seem to worry a lot less about his weight than I do. I always chalked that up to his 'maleness', but maybe the fact I apparently ate four times the chocolate in cookies than he did growing up has something to do with it.)

Annie will be raised with at least the called for amount of chocolate chips in a cookie recipe. Call it compromise. Annie doesn't seem to really care how many chocolate chips are in her cookies, as long as she can spend great deals of time rolling "cookie balls," as she calls them, in her little hands until they're nearly perfect, then take them and throw them onto a cookie sheet. All haphazardly. Then she picks half of them back up and eats them. (Note to anyone we've brought cookies to: Annie rolls her own cookies, that we cook just for her. I use the cookie scoop from Pampered Chef, and not toddler hands, to form the rest of the cookies.)

Anyway, I did want to share with everyone mine and Annie's all time favorite cookie recipe. I think I love them so much because they include everything that makes a great cookie, peanut butter, oatmeal and chocolate chips. It's like three cookies in one! Every time I've ever made these for an event I've been asked by no less than 3 or 4 people for the recipe.

Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies
3/4 c. butter, softened if you already have it out, but feel free to nuke it if you need to, I always use melted butter in this recipe, 'cause we'll chill the dough later.
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar (darker brown sugar makes for a chewier cookie, this is true in all recipes)
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla (I've always over-measured vanilla by at least half, so I do more like 1 1/2-2 tsp.)
1 1/4 cups all purpose flour (I use whole wheat flour, and a couple tablespoons of flax seed).
2 cups rolled oats
1 cup (or more, if you've been raised right) of chocolate chips of your choosing (in my opinion, that'd be milk chocolate). Or chopped peanuts. Or raisins. Or whatever. I'm a chocolate chip person though. Always will be.

Mix butter & peanut butter at high speed for 30 seconds or until well combined. Add sugars, powder and soda. Beat in eggs, vanilla. Mix in all the flour well, then stir in oats and chocolate chips.
At this point we chill the dough for a little while. Either the whole bowl for a few hours, or sometimes we'll put rounded teaspoon size "cookie balls" on cookie sheets and chill them for 20-30 minutes in the fridge. According to Alton Brown (a Food Network host who's a little like Bill Nye the Science Guy with an oven), by chilling the dough first (and using melted butter instead of softened), this all changes how the cookies bake, and will leave you with chewier cookies. It seems to work, we do actually notice a difference between the chilled and non-chilled final results. You can put them straight into the oven without chilling though, the bake time is only like a minute different.
Bake the cookies at 375 for about 9-10 minutes (as few as eight minutes if you're like Greg and want them to fall apart when you try to pick them up, and as much as 11 if you like them crispy, but with my oven I set the timer for 9 minutes with them chilled, then by the time I've heard the timer go off and put down the baby and made it to the oven, they're perfect.)

While typing this I was struck by how small all the measurements seemed to me, then I remembered it's because I've never made a normal sized batch of these cookies, always having doubled it so I can keep half of the dough in the fridge for Greg to snack on, and half to cook with!