This recipe is not new, but it's a favorite...of mine, of my family, and of each and every guest at the DoubleTree Inn.
Some days (ahem, today), all that will do at the end of a long day is a glass of nice wine, some soothing music, and a batch of homemade chocolate chip cookies. I almost did that thing I do-diving into Pinterest to search for a fun, new recipe to soothe my cookie craving. But then I remembered what I'm doing here, and returned to this old, printed one instead.
The Story
My freshman year of high school, we went on a school trip to Tulsa, Oklahoma on a school trip and stayed at the Double Tree Inn. To this day, when people mention Tulsa, I tell my anecdote: "I thought it was a nice city! I had such a nice visit," I say. I am convinced it had less to do with the city and more to do with the cookies I first tasted that trip.
The minute we checked in, we were handed these warm, ooey-gooey cookies the size of our hands. To this day, I don't think I've ever had such a warm welcome again! Truly. I'd already started baking quite a bit by then, and as I devoured these over the course of our trip, I couldn't help trying to pick out what made them so special. I thought about this for months after the trip, when I had an idea: GOOGLE it. This was a newer concept at the time-Yahoo was on the way out and Google was on the way in. And to my rescue, it came!
There it was, The Best Doubletree Chocolate Chip Cookies, the recipe I'd been hunting for. Evidently, the author of the recipe (see recipe credit below) had a good friend who worked for the hotel and shared it with her! All I have to say is thank you, friend. We are all benefitting.
The recipe is fairly straightforward. But there are a couple of tricks that seem worth sharing:
-The oats: Grinding them in the food processor lets you really control the texture they'll add to the cookies. If you don't have a food processor, you can use a blender or just purchase oat flour instead (but the cookie will have less variation in its texture if you use oat flour).
-The chocolate: Use any chocolate chips you like! I have made these with dark chocolate morsels, semisweet, and a combination of semisweet and milk chocolate. You cannot go wrong.
-The lemon juice: KEY! You can either use bottled lemon juice or fresh, whichever is simpler! I was recently gifted this fun little tool to let me spray lemon juice right out of the fruit!
"The Best" Double Tree Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ingredients:
1/2 cup rolled oats
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 cup (2 sticks/8 oz/226g) butter, softened
3/4 cup brown sugar, packed
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
2 eggs
2-2 1/2 cups dark chocolate chips, (I recommend Nestle 53% Dark Chocolate Morsels)
1 1/2 cups chopped pecans (original recipe calls for walnuts, either is fine)
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F/180 degrees C.
Grind oats in a food processor or blender until fine. Combine the ground oats with the flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon in a medium bowl.
Cream together the butter, sugars, vanilla, and lemon juice in another medium bowl with an electric mixer. Add the eggs and mix until smooth.
Stir the dry mixture into the wet mixture and blend well. Add the chocolate chips and nuts to the dough and mix by hand until ingredients are well incorporated.
Spoon rounded 1/4-cup portions onto an ungreased cookie sheet (you can certainly scoop dough into smaller mounds, just set the timer sooner so they don't get overdone). Place the scoops about 2 inches apart. You don't need to press the dough flat. Bake for 16 to 18 minutes or until cookies are light brown and soft in the middle. Store in a sealed container when cool to keep soft. For the best results, chill the dough overnight in the refrigerator before baking the cookies.
Makes 20 large cookies.
Modified from original recipe:
And that's the way the cookie crumbles.
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