“Neiman Marcus” Chocolate Chip Cookie

Beware– the beginning of this post is my cute anecdote about how my husband loves Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies aka the “Neiman Marcus” Cookies.  If you’re here for the recipe, keep scrolling.

Just kidding,  I don’t actually have an anecdote.  Yes, my husband loves oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, this recipe is in his top 2 out of all of the chocolate chip cookies.  And he did sneak a ton of them and acted like I didn’t know how many cookies were missing {I did}. Basically if a recipe contains chocolate in it, then he’s game.  He loves these brownies and is crazy about this cheesecake. He’s a simple guy.

This recipe is the exception to the Great Chocolate Chip Cookie Challenge.  I wanted to see which chocolate chip cookie (without gimmicks) is the best chocolate chip cookie.   None of the recipes have extras like salted caramel, m&ms or pretzels.  

But oatmeal in a chocolate chip cookie is not a gimmick.  There’s an extra crunch from the oats that somehow feels clean  despite the butter and the sugar and the chocolate. Okay it’s not healthy at all, but it just feels that way.  That is the magic of oats in a cookie.    

I followed the King Arthur “Good As Store Bought” Cookie Recipe in the Cookie Companion.  And by “followed’ I mean I basically skipped a couple parts and added some other things and didn’t really follow the recipe after all.  {I wish I were more sorry about it, but the end result was the bomb.com}

What Did I Change?

1. I omitted the chocolate that I was supposed to process with the oats.  This came down to the fact that I didn’t have the right chocolate in the house and decided to skip it.
2. After whisking the oatmeal in with the flour, I made a decision to add a little spice: cinnamon and nutmeg.

Observations:  

• I baked several batches (because of course I did).  Bake times were: immediately after mixing, after the dough chilled for a couple hours and then a week later after the dough was frozen. For this particular cookie, the best was after chilled in the fridge, the worst was after the dough was frozen. More specifically, the frozen dough didn’t get a good spread in the oven.  The texture of the cookie changed too much.
• Baking Time.  The original recipe calls for 12-14 minutes.  I think that’s too much. So again with the experiment.  The first batch I baked between 13-14 minutes. Those were crunchy and good.  The next batch I reduced the time and pulled them out closer to the 11:30 minute mark.  They were just done and little softer and just right.

I took these to the office to get my co-workers to weigh in and they rated high, but not high enough to be the overall office champion.