Secret Ingredient Chocolate Chip Cookies

First of these were wonderful!!! I have a few hours a day to spend with my daughter while my son is at summer camp and I wanted to find something that she may enjoy making with me.

I ordered a book by Cindy Mushet of Sur la Table named "Baking Kids Love". I think we will be pulling some more of her recipes out as we approach the holidays for some new family traditions.

Something else you should know...this makes a lot! When it says you need 2 large bowls, you need 1 XLarge bowl to dump it all into. If you have 1 large and one x-large for the dry you are set. It took a bowl the size of the metal bowl of my KitchenAid stand mixer.

A tip I wish I'd read ahead of time: You can bake some of the cookies today, and freeze the rest of the dough balls for another day. Put the balls close together on a pan and freeze for 30 mintues, or until hard. Transfer teh frozen balls to a resealable plastic freezer bag, and freeze for up to 3 months. To bake, take out as many cookies as you need, and space them on parchment-lined baking sheets. Let them thaw for 15 minutes, then press down on them to flatten slightly, and bake as directed.

INGREDIENTS

• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
• 4 large eggs, at room temperature
• 1 Tbs pure vanilla extract
• 1 cup canola or corn oil
• 4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 cups tightly packed light brown sugar
• 2 1/4 cups old-fashioned rolled oats or quick oats (NOT instant)
• 2 tsp salt
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 2 1/2 cups Kellogg's Corn Flakes (for best results, stick to this brand)
• 1 (12 oz) bag miniature semisweet chocolate chips

Before you begin:

Postition 1 oven rack in the top 1/3 of the oven and 1 oven rack in the bottom 1/3 of the oven, and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line the baking sheets with parchment paper.

Mix the dough:

Put the butter, eggs, and vanilla in a large bowl or x-large bowl & stir with wooden spoon until blended. Add the oil and beat well until combined. It will look like a mess, but that's okay.

Put flour, sugar, brown sugar, oats, salt and baking soda in another large bowl and whisk until blended. Add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture and stir well with a spoon. You can even use your hands to squish all the ingredients together. Sometimes your hands are the best tools.

Put corn flakes into a gallon size resealable plastic bag, squeeze out the air, and seal the top. Squeeze the bag until the flakes are broken into tiny pieces (do not use a food processor, it grinds the flakes too small). Add the crushed flakes and the chocolate chps to the dough and stir until evenly blended.

Shape the cookies:

Use a large (3 Tbs) or small 1 Tbs ice-cream scoop to shape the dough into cookies. You can also shape the dough by measuring out level tablespoons - 3 for each big cookie, 1 for each smaller cookie-- and then roll the dough between your palms into balls.

If you are making large cookies, bake only 6 at a time on each baking sheet, spacing the balls about 4 inches apart. These cookies spread when they bake. If you are making the smaller cookies, you can fit 12 cookies on each pan. Press down on each ball with your palm to flatten slightly.

Bake the cookies:

Place 1 baking sheet on each oven rack. Bake the large cookies for 7 minutes or the smaller cookies for 6 minutes. Using the oven mitts, switch the pans between the oven racks. Bake until light golden brown, another 7 to 8 minutes for large cookies, or 6 to 7 for smaller cookies.

Transfer the pans to the cooling racks and let the cookies cool completely. You may need to reuse the pans to finish baking all of the cookies. Let the pans cool before you put more dough on them for baking. Store the cookies in an airtight container or resealable plastic bag for up to 1 week.