I was young, and staying with a babysitter throughout my school’s summer vacation.  I must have been around 7 or 8 years old.  One day we had went to my babysitter’s mom’s house, just down the road.  My babysitter’s mom was very elderly, but still perfectly capable of living on her own.  I don’t know if she was a busy cook or baker, or if she just had a couple good recipes that she threw together, but her chocolate chip cookies were the best I’ve ever tasted.  I think that I was allowed to have two, yet I begged for more.  They were warm from the oven, chock full of chocolate chips, the browning was perfect and they were the most perfect level of soft, chewy and gooey.  I’ve never tasted a chocolate chip cookie like that again, which is unfortunate, because you just hate to lose a good thing.  Both my babysitter and her mom have passed away and that recipe for her chocolate chip cookies has vanished.  But that’s what makes it so special now.

I’ve made so many chocolate chip cookie recipes and I always end up subconsciously comparing my batch of cookies to my babysitter’s mom’s cookies; none have been quite as good as hers, or at least not as good as I remember them being.

The browned butter of the Cook’s Illustrated perfect chocolate chip cookies, and their chewiness, make this my favorite recipe.  I have recently found my second favorite recipe, however, and it comes from a very unexpected place; the inside of a box of unsalted butter.  Land O’ Lakes butter, to be exact.

I had cut this recipe for chewy jumbo chocolate chip cookies out of the Land O’ Lakes unsalted butter box a long time ago because the recipe looked okay and I tucked it away into my recipe book; I was just reluctant to try it out because I didn’t have much hope for a recipe that came from inside a box of butter.

However, I came across a post from Cooking On The Side for this exact same recipe from Land O’ Lakes and the pictures of these cookies looked very tempting.  Kathy, like me, was originally skeptical of this particular recipe, but gave it a go and was pleasantly surprised with the outcome.  So I decided to pull out my cut-out recipe and finally try it for myself.

The two photos in this post so far show the result of this recipe.  While they don’t bring me back to the cookie I tasted nearly 25 years ago, they have earned the status of my second favorite chocolate chip cookie, and with me being so picky about my chocolate chip cookies, that’s saying a lot!  The cookies turned out crisp around the edges and chewy in the middle.

But wait, I have a related cookie (at least in that it also has chocolate chips) to share with you in this post; the monster cookie.  This is a cookie I’ve never heard of and first found at Sophistimom.  I did some searches for monster cookie recipes online, but out of all that I found, Sophistimom’s recipe was my favorite.

These cookies are fully packed with oats and peanut butter and they are jumbo!  You could eat these cookies for dinner and be stuffed full!  But wow, they are great.  Next time I make these (and there will be a next time), I might add a bit more chocolate chips, not much, but maybe a couple tablespoons more.  The dough was a little crumbly and the chocolate chips had a tendency to stick together in clumps for some reason.  These are super chewy cookies and they stayed gooey in the middle after baking.  I made half of these cookies jumbo-sized (for super quick breakfasts!), and the other half I made regular sized with a generously rounded tablespoon of dough (for deserts!).  I froze the leftover cookies and they have frozen well.

Find the recipe for Sophistimom’s monster cookies on her website.

For the recipe for chewy jumbo chocolate chip cookies from Land O’ Lakes…

Chewy Jumbo Chocolate Chip Cookies
Adapted from inside Land O Lakes unsalted butter box
Makes 26 jumbo cookies

Ingredients
4 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons salt*
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 cups unsalted butter
1 1/4 cups sugar
1 1/4 cups firmly packed brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla
1 (12-ounce) package (2 cups) semi-sweet chocolate chunks or chocolate chips

Method
Heat oven to 375°F.

Combine flour, baking powder and baking soda in a medium bowl. Set aside.

Combine butter, sugar and brown sugar in a large bowl. Beat at medium speed, scraping the bowl often, until creamy. Add eggs and vanilla. Continue beating, scraping bowl often, until well mixed. Reduce speed to low. Beat, gradually adding flour mixture, until well mixed. Stir in chocolate chunks.

Drop dough by 1/4 cupfuls, 2 inches apart, onto ungreased cookie sheets. Bake for 10 to 14 minutes or until light golden brown. (Do not overbake.) Let stand 1 to 2 minutes. Remove from cookie sheets.

*Note that it may have been a mistake on the box that the salt was left out of the recipe; Kathy from Cooking On The Side added salt to her recipe, and if you read the recipe for these cookies on the Land O’ Lakes website you will see that salt is indeed one of the ingredients.  The recipe I posted here is from the Land O’ Lakes website, although 2 teaspoons seems like a lot of salt (I used 1 teaspoon).

Add Some Flaxseed
Milled flaxseed is packed with heart-healthy oils and is a good source of fiber.  Besides sprinkling it on cereal or blending it into smoothies, it can be substituted for some of the fat in breads and muffins.  Try using 3 tablespoons of milled flaxseed instead of 1 tablespoon butter or oil called for in a recipe.  Be sure to use milled or ground flaxseed to enjoy all its wholesome benefits.

So I added 3 tablespoons of ground flaxseed to the dry ingredients, and reduced the oil in the recipe by 1 tablespoon.  The result is an awesome wholesome-tasting muffin that is just perfect for breakfast.

Brown Sugar Oat Muffins (with Ground Flaxseed)
Adapted from The Taste of Home Cookbook
Makes 12

Ingredients
1 cup old fashioned oats
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup packed brown sugar (I used light)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons ground flaxseed
2 eggs
3/4 cup milk
1/4 cup vegetable oil, minus 1 tablespoon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

In a medium bowl, combine the oats, flours, brown sugar, baking powder, salt and flaxseed. In a small bowl, whisk the eggs, milk, oil and vanilla. Stir into the dry ingredients just until combined.

Fill greased or paper-lined muffin cups two-thirds full*. Bake at 400 degrees F for 15-17 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool for 5 minutes before removing from pan to a wire rack. Serve warm.

* I filled the cups closer to 3/4′s full.

Mmm, I can’t wait until tomorrow’s breakfast to have another one!  :)