Recipe: Grandmother Watson's Oatmeal Tollhouse Cookies (aka Chocolate chip cookies)

Grandmother Watson's Oatmeal Tollhouse Cookies (aka Chocolate chip cookies)

This recipe can be made as chocolate chip cookies or raisin cookies. It is rather similar to the recipe Cliff Stoll included in his book The Cuckoo's Egg, except for the oatmeal. It's a bit touchy, but you can end up with some wonderful slightly soft cookies where the oatmeal almost completely disappears if you do everything just right. Enjoy! William

1 1/2 cups flour* (see note)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup butter or margarine (2 sticks), room temperature
3/4 cup brown sugar, packed firmly
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs, unbeaten
1 teaspoon hot water
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups old fashioned oats (*Not* instant!)
1 (12 ounce) pkg chocolate chips (large package)
1 cup chopped nuts (optional)

Sift flour with soda and set aside.

Cream butter till soft. Gradually add sugars to butter, creaming until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating after each addition. Blend in hot water and vanilla. Add flour and remaining dry ingredients and blend well. (I usually do this by hand, instead of using the old sunbeam mixer, as it makes less of a mess, it's easy to do, and mixing the cookie dough is a bit hard on the mixer.)

Drop large spoonfuls onto greased cookie sheets and bake at 375 F for 8 minutes. Note that the cookies tend to spread quite a bit.

This recipe could easily be made with raisins instead of chocolate drops.

*Note on flour quantity: I use 1 3/4 cups of flour, rather than the 1 1/2 that the recipe calls for. This recipe seems to be quite sensitive to variations in the quantity of flour. I keep my flour in a large jar and pour it into the measure, while my mother (and grandmother, I suspect) keeps hers in a large tub and measures it by scooping it out. This seems to make quite a large difference in the amount of air in the flour. If you haven't enough flour, the cookies tend to be very flat, while too much flour makes for cakier cookies that burn on the bottom before cooking through. It's easier to add flour if you have too little, so you might want to err in that direction.

Source: William J. Watson