The Best-Ever Peanut Butter, Oatmeal, and Chocolate Chip Cookies

Senses are so important when cooking. It’s like when you walk down the street and smell something so extraordinary that it makes you hungry – it doesn’t matter if you’ve just eaten, you just have to eat whatever you’re smelling. Your sense of smell can also trigger a memory from the past, like the cumin your mother would put in her famous chili, or the sweet scent of bananas baking in your grandmother’s bread when you would visit her. 

For me, it was always the sweet and savory scent of freshly baked peanut butter, oatmeal, and chocolate chip cookies…YUM! The saltiness of the peanut butter, the sweetness of the chocolate chips and hearty creaminess of the oatmeal blend so well together, you just can’t stop at just one. I love to let them cool for just a bit and take a bite and the chocolate melts in my mouth.

This cookie is one of my guilty pleasures, and there’s no way I would share the last one with any of my children. A girl has to have her boundaries.

The Best-Ever Peanut Butter, Oatmeal, and Chocolate Chip Cookies

Yields 6 dozen cookies

Ingredients:

2 cups quick cooking oats

2 cups all purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

¼ tsp salt

1 cup room temp butter or margarine

1 cup of creamy or chunky peanut butter (depending on your liking)

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup firmly packed brown sugar

2 eggs

2 tsp of vanilla extract

1- 12oz package of either semi-sweet or dark chocolate chips

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a small bowl, combine oats, flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt, and set it aside.
3. In a large bowl, using an electric mixer on medium speed, beat the butter and peanut butter until combined and smooth.
4. Beat in the sugars and then the eggs and the vanilla until well blended.
5. Slowly add your flour mixture just until blended. Then add your chocolate chips.
6. On ungreased baking pans, drop dough in tablespoons and place 2 inches apart.
7. Bake for 13 minutes and let them cool.

Until next time…Samantha Bann

www.vegasvalleycatering.com