I Love Lying to Myself

I was inspired by RA's latest post to echo my long time love of this particular oatmeal cookie recipe. It was even part of my recent cooking surge inspired by my new kitchen island. I don't need to give you the recipe as it's already in the link above, but I will tell you that these cookies are fabulous. A little crispy on the outside, but so soft and chewy on the inside! The recipe is for oatmeal raisin cookies, but in our house, raisins in cookies are considered a cruel hoax. They look like chocolate chips and string you along right up until you take a bite and discover the horrible truth. So we omit the nutmeg and substitute chocolate chips for raisins. There's enough oats in these cookies that you can even pretend that they're a little bit healthy! They're "hearty" enough that I'm occasionally tempted to make them my lunch. Also, keep in mind that they're designed to be huge. Observe how they dwarf Claire's hands:

So it's great because I can say, "I'm just going to have one cookie."

Anyway, the info I really want to impart here is a cookie dough rolling technique that I learned from one of the America's Test Kitchen/Cook's Illustrated Magazine cookbooks. How do you find the compromise between the cohesiveness and uniform density of the rolled cookie dough ball and the interesting cragginess of the dropped cookie?

Shaping Thick Chocolate Chip Cookies:

1.Creating a jagged surface on each dough ball gives the finished cookies an attractive appearance. Start by rolling a scant 1/4 cup (or however much you're using) of dough into a smooth ball.

2. Holding the dough ball in the fingertips of both hands, pull the dough apart into two equal halves.

3. Each half will have a jagged surface where it was ripped from the other. Rotate each piece 90 degrees so that the jagged surfaces face up.

4. Jam the halves back together into one ball so that the top surface remains jagged.

So go ahead! Go have yourself just one cookie that's full of healthy oats...