Chocolate Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

Ingredients:
2 oz semisweet chips
3/4 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup old fashioned rolled oats
1/4 cup cocoa
4 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg, at room temperature


Directions:
Preheat oven to 350. Line 2 cookie sheets with parchment paper. In a large bowl, cream together the butter, vanilla and sugar. Add the egg, beat until fluffy. Add the flour, cocoa, baking powder, salt, and oatmeal. Mix until well combined. Fold in chips. Place heaping tablespoons of dough on the lined cookie sheet about 1/2 inch apart and bake for 12-14 minutes or until they look "set". Carefully remove to a wire rack to cool completely.

Yield: roughly 2 dozen cookies

My thoughts:

I had a guest in the kitchen this morning and had a lot of fun talking about what I was making and how I come up with recipes while I was actually doing it. Cooking is such an automatic process that it was great to slow down and think about exactly what I was doing. To think about how I replaced 1/4 cup of what would normally be flour with cocoa to make chocolate cookies, that 2 oz of chips was just enough to add some extra chocolate and texture interest without being too much and the importance of using a room temperature egg (so it doesn't harden the butter into chunks when you mix it in). I was a little nervous about baking and talking at the same time, but I remembered to take the cookies out of the oven on time and my guest said that the texture of the cookies was "perfect". What more could you want? Of course they are also very chocolate-y, a little chewy and since oats are cholesterol-lowering and all that, practically a health food. Okay, so maybe it isn't health food, but is tasty!