Simple and Chewy Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

*Chef's Note: 9 times out of 10 I prefer cookie dough to cookies (with a few minor exceptions) and the [fully baked] cookies I like are moist and chewy. At the insistence of Husband, we made this cookie dough on Sunday night, ate some of the dough and put it away. By the next day the dough had firmed up a little bit and the oatmeal had soaked up enough of the moisture to keep the cookies from spreading when baked. This seemed to be the ideal way to handle the dough as it was pretty solid and easy to roll into balls. As it is with most cookies, the smaller these guys are, the cuter they are. And if they're small you can justify eating 15 because, really, "they're not that big" and they have oatmeal in them. So they're basically health food.*



Prep: 30 minutes
Bake: 10 minutes
Oven: 325 degrees
makes about 4 dozen big cookies or 6 dozen small cookies

1 cup butter, softened
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract (for cookies I always use more vanilla than it calls for)
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour (more if you are going to bake them right away rather than chilling. It helps firm up the dough so the cookies don't spread)
1 tablespoon baking soda (sounds like a lot, but isn't)
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 cups quick-cooking oats (we used old fashioned and they worked fine)
1 cup chopped walnuts (any nuts work well--we used finely chopped almonds and it tasted fabulous)
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips (butterscotch chips would be fabulous too--could do half and half)

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C).The lower temperature lets the cookies bake all the way through without making them really crusty on the outside.
   
2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar, and white sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs one at a time, then stir in vanilla. Combine the flour, baking soda, and salt; stir into the creamed mixture until just blended. Mix in the quick oats, walnuts, and chocolate chips. Drop by heaping spoonfuls onto baking sheets covered with parchment paper.
3. Bake for 10 minutes in the preheated oven. Pull them out when the cookies look like they are just about to brown (they will look pretty blond but still cooked--shiny means they are underdone). Lift the parchment paper out of the pan so the cookies can cool on the counter. Once they have hardened up a little (about 4 or so minutes) transfer to a cooling rack.
   

When storing chewy cookies one way to keep them from drying out is to place a piece of bread in the container with the cookies. The bread is moist enough that it keeps them chewy, although the outside crispiness will lessen because of this. (Since no one really likes the heels of the bread around here we usually put those to good use this way.) Change the piece of bread when it gets dry and crusty if everyone hasn't eaten the cookies by then.