My Favorite Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe

I grew up in a cookie family. Some families are pie families. Some families are ice cream families. Some families are into cake. The Eyres were firmly into cookies. As teenagers, my sister Shawni or I made cookies all the time after school. Our friends and younger siblings and all their friends had handfuls of cookie dough (a lot of times, the cookies never made it to the oven and we'd never really heard of salmonella but no one ever got sick) and fresh hot cookies for their after school snacks in our crowded kitchen - always the gathering place. 

Now, whenever my extended family gets together, someone is whipping up a batch of cookies at least once a day. Our kids have been trained in cookie-making from young ages and they do a lot of the cookie baking these days. Most of us have developed our own special versions of the oatmeal chocolate chip recipes we made and experimented with when we were growing up.  Shawni brought a great oatmeal-heavy recipe from her mother-in-law to our family. Jonah perfected a fabulous recipe including ground flax seed instead of some of the butter. Saydi created a recipe that includes coconut and rice crispies for an added twist. Oatmeal is a staple in pretty much all our recipes as are semi-sweet chocolate chips but more recently Levain copy-cat recipes entered the scene and those non-oatmeal chocolate chip cookies have become a favorite as well (this is my favorite recipe for Levain copy-cats). Everyone has their strong opinions about what's the best recipe but luckily, since we make cookies repeatedly when we're all together, everyone gets a chance to make their favorite recipe.

Here are a few photos I found quickly and easily of cookie-baking experiences over the years:

my sister Saydi making cookies with Ashton and Isaac the night before the twins were born

Ashton doling out the cookies to siblings and cousins

Liza and Silas work as a team to make cookies
(this is how many should fit on a cookie sheet for the recipe below - and the cookie scoop is a great thing!)

Anyway, over the years I've fine-tuned what is now MY favorite oatmeal chocolate chip cookie. And here it is - for posterity - and for those who might want to try it out!

Here's how the cookies from this recipe are supposed to look
(the twins wanted them for their birthday "cake" a couple years ago)

Best Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Loosli Family Favorite

This is the recipe we've come up with after lots of trial and error over the years. It's super yummy and we love doing different variations – sometimes with chocolate chips and dried cherries or craisins and coconut, other times with chocolate chips and raisins, sometimes with chocolate chips and walnuts. As this recipe uses ½ the butter and less sugar than most recipes and has lots of oatmeal and some flax seed, it's quite healthy as far as cookies go.

This recipe makes the equivalent of a double batch of most recipes - about 40 cookies. If you want a smaller batch, cut it in half. Or make the whole batch, cook half and make the rest into dough balls to freeze and cook later.

Cream together:

2 cubes butter (1 cup) - softened

½ cup ground flax seed

1 ½ c. brown sugar (loosely packed)

1 c. white sugar

3 large eggs 

2 tsp vanilla

Then add:

1 ½ c white flour

¾ c. whole wheat flour (or more white flour for a total of 2 1/4 cups)

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

MIX IN with the rest, adding one cup of flour at a time and mixing until smooth

then add, one cup at a time:

3 ½ cups quick oatmeal

1 c. chocolate chips (or 1 1/2 cups if you like them more chocolaty)

Optional: (you can cut down a bit on the chocolate chips if you want to add all this stuff)

1 c. raisins, craisins or dried cherries

1 c. flaked sweetened coconut

1 c. rice crispies

1/2 - 1 c. chopped walnuts

Preheat convection oven to 350 degrees. Drop by spoonful (or cookie scoop) onto a cookie sheet. Should fit on two cookie sheets if you do 5 rows of 4 (plus there will be a little dough to eat!). Cook for 8-9 minutes. Take out when slightly brown on edges but still a bit doughy looking in the middle. Once cooled, put in the freezer if you'd like to have them remain super fresh for use in the future. Or eat the day you bake them!