Crispy Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Author Notes

Chocolate chip cookies are delicious. So are oatmeal raisin cookies. But in my opinion, the king of all cookies is a hybrid of the two. For years, I'd been sampling and comparing oatmeal chocolate chip cookies but had never tried making my own. Until this week, that is. After one misguided attempt resulting in insipid, cakey little domes that dried out almost instantaneously, I took a step back for a minute. I thought about a standard chewy oatmeal raisin cookie—the kind that bends as you bite into it and leaves behind a rich, spicy aftertaste. And then I thought of the chocolate chip cookies my mother used to make when I was growing up. She took the recipe from the Nestle Toll House chocolate chips bag and tweaked it so the cookies came out flatter and crisper around the edges, with rich caramel undertones. I decided what I was really looking to achieve lay somewhere in between these two.

Because everyone raves about it, I started with the basic oatmeal raisin cookie recipe on the lid of the Quaker Oats canister, holding it next to the Toll House recipe and making some surgical adjustments. First, I decreased the flour a little and decided to use one egg instead of two so that the cookies would be thinner and less cakey. I added a little nutmeg and some allspice to the rather timid teaspoon of cinnamon decreed by the Quaker box. Instead of one cup of raisins, I added two full cups of chocolate chips (my mother's cookies were pebbled with chips). I also raised the oven temperature by 25 degrees (I really wanted those nice, crisp edges).

The resulting cookies were crisp indeed, almost lacy, with little pockets where butter and sugar had pooled to create crackly deposits of caramel. The spices were pronounced without being overbearing, and every cookie promised at least half a dozen chips. It was difficult to wait until they were cool enough to handle. I may never make plain old chocolate chip cookies again! —Merrill Stubbs