The Great Cookie Bake

So something I totally underestimated in time was baking all the cookies for our favors. I figured if we started at 9am or so, we'd be done around noon. Plenty of time to chill and hang out afterwards, right? Wrong. We didn't finish until like 2:30pm or so.

First of all, the guys were assembling to go get their tuxedos that morning. In our house. There were only three guys there (The Candyman, his Best Man and my Dad) but it was like there was a tornado of testosterone in the house. The Candyman and The Best Man were threatening each other to a wrestling match. Lots of loud and big smack-talking. Then my Dad made some sweeping, political statement (he refers to himself as a Federalist, The Candyman calls him a crazy, angry Republican) that got The Candyman all up in arms and when those two start a political "discussion" it goes on and on and on and on and on....so I stopped the whole thing by screaming, "EVERYONE NOT BAKING COOKIES, GET OUT OF THE HOUSE!" So they left. And it was almost 10am. Damn.

Now, I believe that these cookies are the best effing cookies ever. I have lots of people who have had them who feel the same way. They also fit my color scheme of chocolate brown, ivory and sandalwood. I'll share the recipe at the end (and no, it's not the Neiman Marcus cookie recipe). These cookies are high maintenance to make. There's a ton of prep work.

You have to grind the oatmeal into an oatmeal flour.

You have to beat these up with a hammer so that they are bite size pieces.

You have to mix all the goodies together to make just the right consistency.

You roll them into balls so that they come out the same size, then they have to cool (yeah, this is where I jacked up the timing. I really didn't think that through).

We had two stations going at once, each with a double recipe. That's a lot of freakin' cookie dough, people.

Here's the MOH chronicling the whole affair!

After the cookies cooled, my Mom slid one cookie into a bag and taped it shut. We were able to fit 3 cookies per box, but we did have to squish them down a bit. Since they were all still ever so slightly warm, this didn't hurt them a bit.

I put the cookie recipe on the top, then put the lid back on and slid the pre-tied ribbon back on. Let me say, this was the best thing I did: to pre-tie all those damn bows saved me oodles of time on this project. If you're DIYing a lot of things, try to think of as much stuff to do in advance to save time on projects that can only be done right before the wedding day.

The Amazing Cookie Recipe

2 cups butter, room temperature
4 cups flour
2 tsp. baking soda
2 cups granulated sugar
2 cups brown sugar
5 cups blended oatmeal (measure oatmeal and blend in blender to a fine powder)
24 oz. chocolate chips
1 tsp. salt
1 8 oz. Hershey bar (grated)
4 eggs
2 tsp. baking powder
3 cups chopped nuts (your choice)
2 tsp. vanilla

Cream the butter and both sugars. Add eggs and vanilla; mix together with flour, oatmeal, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Add chocolate chips, Hershey bar and nuts. Roll into balls and place two inches apart on a cookie sheet. Bake for 10 minutes at 375 degrees. Makes 112 cookies.

This is the "official recipe." However, I do not follow it. If you use all of the blended oatmeal, the cookies will be too dry. I generally leave out about half a cup, but I really just go on the taste of the cookie dough (What? A good cook tastes as she goes!). Here's the other important tip: mix the flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder together in a separate bowl and add that to the butter mixture first. Then slowly add in the oatmeal flour until it's the right consistency.

The Hershey Bar I use is dark chocolate. I've used Ghirardelli dark chocolate too. No difference. Milk chocolate bars mixed with the semi-sweet chips isn't as good - it's too sweet. I also don't grate it. I beat the bars with a hammer to make bigger chunks. Don't do this on your kitchen counter. I go outside and do it on the pavement with the wrapped bars in a plastic bag. I use walnuts for the nuts. Pecans are too sweet. Almonds are just gross. I've tried it, trust me. I also did pine nuts once. That was just weird - they were too oily. The only other variation that I think is slammin' is substituting half of the semi-sweet chocolate chips with peanut butter chips. The Candyman had a food-gasm when I made them this way. The best advice I can give is to make sure there is always more "stuff" in each rolled ball than dough. Consider the dough just an adhesive to keep all the chocolate and nuts together.

All of this took us a lot longer than we thought. If I had borrowed an extra cookie sheet, we could have finished a lot sooner as we could have had double batches baking at the same time. As we were finishing, the guys had come back from tuxedo-fitting and cheese-burger-eating and were smack-talking in the living room while the girls slaved away in the kitchen. Typical. :)

You know what? I know this recipe by heart. I do. I just went back and looked at the template I used for the recipe card I put in the favor boxes. It's not right. Eh? I'm wondering if the version I actually printed is the same one I just looked at. I know I halved the recipe for the cards, maybe I jacked it up by doing that? OK, how freakin' lame would that be if I gave all my guests the wrong recipe??? Perhaps the only upside to that is that no one will be making them as well as I do! Well, except for all you people I just gave the recipe to. :) Oh crap. Oh well. Enjoy!

P.S. If you received one of the favors and note that the recipe is wrong. Please don't tell me. Just use the correct recipe above. Denial is sweet, as are these cookies.