You may have heard the following tale: A woman seeks to purchase a cookie recipe and is informed that it would cost $2.50. When she receives her credit card statement, she initially believes this to be $2.50 but discovers it is actually $250. Outraged, she disseminates the recipe widely in an effort to maximize her profit. I was handed a recipe on a piece of paper with the year “1986” on it when I first heard this tale six years ago. The recipe’s purported creator was a well-known cookie manufacturer. Since then, I’ve heard this story repeated numerous times, with the recipe coming from other expensive department stores. Real life? Who knows, but the cookie sure is tasty. Here’s my take on it.
| Prep Time: | 15 mins |
| Cook Time: | 8 mins |
| Total Time: | 23 mins |
| Servings: | 60 |
| Yield: | 5 dozen |
Ingredients
- 1 cup butter, softened
- 1 cup white sugar
- 1 cup packed brown sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 ½ cups rolled oats
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
- 4 ounces milk chocolate, grated
- 1 ½ cups chopped walnuts
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Measure oats into a blender or food processor, and then blend to a fine powder. Set aside.
- In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugars. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. In a separate bowl, mix together flour, oats, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Stir dry ingredients into creamed butter and sugar. Add chocolate chips, grated chocolate, and nuts.
- Drop by rounded teaspoons onto ungreased cookie sheets. Bake for 6 to 8 minutes in the preheated oven.
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 141 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 18 g |
| Cholesterol | 15 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 1 g |
| Protein | 2 g |
| Saturated Fat | 4 g |
| Sodium | 76 mg |
| Sugars | 11 g |
| Fat | 8 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
The best chocolate chip cookie I’ve tried.
Our very favorite. Highly recommended.
I love these! I agree that the oatmeal should be ground in a food processor, and adding the chocolate to that seems like a sensibility idea. Sometimes I just use cocoa powder. I use a 1.5” cookie scoop, get 55 cookies, but they need exactly 10 min baking time. For those who prefer to measure some ingredients by weight, here are the weights I use: 1 cup packed brown sugar= 212 grams 2 cups flour = 240 grams 2.5 cups ground oatmeal=288 grams
Great recipe, been using this for years. I don’t grind up the oatmeal, I use HU chocolate chunks that melt very well, and I use Trader Joe’s (big/thick) milk chocolate Belgium bar that I shave for the chocolates shavings. I also use Kerrygold butter from Costco. A tip that helps the cookies to get a deeper caramelized flavor – leave the cookie dough to rest in the fridge for 24 hours. It makes a huge difference in taste! Any leftover dough, I portion out into balls, flatten a bit, and freeze in Ziploc bags. Then whenever I want a fresh baked cookie I can just pop one in the oven from the freezer. Delicious!
TL;DR – you must grind your oats. Hand mix (**do not use an electric mixer**) the flour mixture into the wet mixture. Chill your dough for at least an hour to prevent spreading. Use unsalted butter, NOT margarine. I am normally a recipe purist when baking something for the first time. However, I came across this recipe while snowed in with a toddler and a newborn, during quarantine, and made do without either the grated milk chocolate or the walnuts. I used mini chocolate chips instead of standard (always my preference for cookies). All other ingredients and measurements were the same. I chilled the dough overnight and baked them the next morning, at 375 for about 9-10 minutes. Let them rest for 5 minutes on the pan and then cooled on a rack. They did not spread at all, they were perfectly chewy and thick. I did press them slightly before putting them in the oven. Pay attention to the recipe instructions – you must grind the oats before using them. The recipe also says to STIR the dry ingredients into the wet mixture; do not use your electric mixer. The dough is very thick and it will not be good for the motor.
I did a half batch, But, I accidentally put a full cup of butter, rather than a half cup and I also put 1.5 cups of almonds ground up instead of all-purpose flour and steel cut oats instead of quick cook oats. Oh, and 1 1/4 cups cocoa powder instead of the other chocolates. Turned out AMAZING!!!
The only change I made when following the recipe was to add a tsp vanilla. I wasn’t impressed. They tasted like oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. Given the processing the oats and grating the chocolate these were more work than regular oatmeal chocolate chip cookies without more reward. Will not make again.
Exact same recipe I’ve been making since mid-1980’s with the same story—Mrs Fields or a department store. I often leave out the shredded chocolate bar and nuts. I recently started adding coconut flakes to the batter making them even more of a crack cookie!!! I use 1/2 margarine and 1/2 unsalted butter. Willing to read any other great comments that takes this to a higher level.
I have been an Allrecipes member since there was an Allrecipes. I have made many cookies from this site. I have the Allrecipes “Tried and True Favorites” cookbook (copyright 2001). This recipe is in that book. The recipe was published in 1997 on Cookierecipes.com. I have never made it. It did not seem special. I was wrong. It is special. Crispy bottoms, chewey tops. The perfect balance of chocolate and nuts.
Too sweet and I used dark chocolate so can’t imagine how much sweeter it would be with the lighter chocolate.
No walnuts no brown sugar no baking soda or baking powder and 1 and a half of white sugar then combined together then put medium scopes on baking sheets the baked them for 12 minutes and then I let them cool on cooling rack finally put cookies in a nice jar oh and i ate one it was yummy
I know this “urban legend” first hand! It was from my coworker in Montreal, a French Canadian woman called Julie who went to a big department store and got the “two fifty” cost of the recipe as the urban legend says. This was in 2005 or 2006, and if my memory serves me, the store was Ogilvy. Posting the recipe online was her revenge and here we are enjoying it many years later
Made as written! Perfect, I made them a little larger so cooked them longer! Husband loved them.
It was advised a few times, so I used 3/4 C of each sugar and am glad I did. Delicious! I love the texture if the blended oats.
This is my go to for chocolate chip cookies. The ground oats give the texture just the right amount of chewiness. I scoop them with a 1/8 cup scoop and bake them for about 15 minutes on parchment. They freeze really well (once cooled and securely sealed in a heavy ziplock bag) for several months. Otherwise, I’d eat them all : )
Las mejores galletas del mundo!!!!!
The best cookie ever… make them every year as Christmas gifts
They are one of the best chocolate chip cookies I have eaten.
This is the best chocolate chip cookie I’ve ever had! I made this exactly like the recipe called for and it was really good. Then, I was trying to make it again and I forgot to grind the oats and wow!!! They tasted even better. These cookies were moist and truly delicious! This is definitely my go-to cookie recipe.
I did not grind the oats very fine- I left them fairly coarse to give more texture and oat flavor to the cookies. I also did not add the additional chocolate shavings, just the chocolate chips and used chopped pecans instead of walnuts.
I always follow this recipe to a T. Back in the day it was called Nieman Marcus Cookie. Urban Legend or not-great story!!!