Oatmeal Cookies

With chocolate chips and peanut butter, this cookie is a crowd-pleaser that’s great for get-togethers.

These oatmeal cookies go great with coffee!

I ain’t gonna lie—I took this recipe from a package of Trader Joe’s gluten free rolled oats.

I made the cookies recently to bring to a friend’s party, and people loved them, so I thought sharing the recipe more broadly would help make for more happy tastebuds. It’s also good for people to hear that these back-of-the-package recipes are actually pretty good and not so difficult to make. Plus I think I improved the recipe by listing the ingredients in the order they’re actually used. This recipe makes a lot of cookies (about 48), so here’s to sharing cookies with friends!

You’ll need a large mixing bowl and at least one greased cookie sheet—if you have more than one, you can avoid baking this in batches, as I had to do with my one sheet!

Ingredients:

1. ¼ cup softened butter (1/2 stick) (see note 1 below)

2. ¾ cup sugar

3. ¾ cup brown sugar

4. 2 eggs

5. 1 teaspoon vanilla

6. 1 ¼ baking soda

7. 1 cup peanut butter (see note 2 below)

8. 3 cups gluten free rolled oats

9. 6 ounces chocolate chips

10. ½ cup chopped nuts (see note 3 below)

    

    The ingredients you’ll need are butter, sugar, brown sugar, eggs, vanilla, baking soda, peanut butter, rolled oats, chocolate chips, and chopped nuts.

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees (325 if using convection)

2. Put the sugar, brown sugar, and butter into the large bowl and mix together until creamy

3. Add the eggs, vanilla, and baking soda to the bowl and mix

4. Add the peanut butter to the bowl and mix

5. Add the oats, chocolate chips, and nuts to the bowl and stir to combine

6. Use a spoon to scoop out teaspoon-sized dollops of dough and place them in rows on the cookie sheet (see note 4 below)

7. Bake 10–12 minutes until slightly brown

Scoop spoonfuls of cookie dough and line them up on a buttered cookie sheet. The recipe calls for teaspoon-sized, but mine were probably closer to tablespoon-sized.

Notes:

1. To soften butter enough that it mixes easily with sugar and other ingredients, you generally need to leave it sit at room temperature for about an hour. Some recipes suggest half an hour, but after 30 minutes, the butter is usually still too firm. This is a step I often forget myself; in this case, I had all my ingredients on the counter ready to go, when I remembered I hadn’t let the butter soften….How frustrating!

2. I used creamy peanut butter, the all-natural kind, but I imagine if you have chunky peanut butter, that will work just as well.

3. I don’t always follow recipes faithfully. The TJ’s recipe suggested using sunflower seeds or chopped walnuts, but I had chopped pecans, so I used those.

4. I say teaspoon-sized dollops, but I always tend to do these things bigger, so I’d say my cookies started out as tablespoon-sized or more. Be sure to leave at least a half-inch of space around the cookies when you place them on the sheet, because they will expand during baking.

Cat update:

Seraphina loving the warmth of the radiator cover.

The building I live in has hot-water radiator heat, and Seraphina just loves lying on top of the radiator cover when the heat is going. It’s spring, but nights and mornings can still be chilly, so Seraphina is taking advantage of the warm radiators as much as she can!