I still remember back when I went to Hospitality school, one of our courses was a semi-recreational cooking course – no, I did not go to culinary school, this class was basically a blip in my college education that was otherwise geared towards hotel operations. We had to work in teams, and basically execute a set of recipes once every week. For me, it was a ton of fun because our dorms didn’t have kitchens, so that was the only time I could actually cook for myself. On my team, we had my college bestie(shoutout to Katareena), our very competent teammate, Kayla, who was a fantastic cook in her own right, and our fourth teammate, who I will not name in this case because it was NOT a good situation for her. Basically, one of the lessons, we had to make oatmeal cookies(we got the choice between raisin or chocolate, but we all chose chocolate). I had put the cookies into the oven, but got held up with prepping some of the other dishes we had to make. So I asked that fourth teammate, who was literally doing nothing, to grab the cookies from the oven for me, since it was time to pull them. So she grabs the tray from the oven(without any baking mitts on), proceeds to burn her hand, leaves our cookies in the oven, and tries to make me look like the bad guy in all of this by crying and claiming I made her grab the tray without mitts. It was a bizarre situation. I mean, did I tell her to grab the cookies out of the oven? Yes, absolutely I did. She was literally standing there in a corner watching water boil. But did I tell her that she should grab a burning hot tray without oven mitts? I mean, I would assume that people have more common sense than that. But I guess I was wrong – some people really have to be handheld through life, a lesson I would continue to learn even over 10 years later. All that to say, whenever I make an oatmeal cookie of any kind, I think of that moment I served oatmeal hockey pucks in that cooking class, and despite my teammate trying to vilify me, me taking the high road because picking a fight with someone that misguided is not a good look or a fair fight.

For this variation of an oatmeal-chocolate chip cookie, there were a couple of tweaks, besides baking them for 25 minutes because someone left my cookies in the oven for 12 extra minutes. I used oat flour, made by grinding down rolled oats into a fine powder. I love baking with oat flour, because it adds a natural nuttiness as the flour browns. I also used brown butter to further accentuate that flavor. For some other seasonings, I used tonka bean, which tastes like almonds, cherry, and cacao nibs, to tie in with the oat and chocolate even further, and cinnamon, since cinnamon and oatmeal make for such a classic combination, and I just like the slight taste of cinnamon in my own chocolate chip cookies – it adds this homey feel to them. These cookies are crunchy at the edges, nutty from the brown butter, oat, and tonka, and the bits of semi-sweet, dark, and milk chocolate add pops of bitterness and sweetness. I used three kinds of chocolate in this recipe, being dark chocolate, semi-sweet chocolate, and Valrhona Azelia, which is a hazelnut-flavored milk chocolate. The three help bring contrast to the cookie, just so each bite will be slightly different. My one regret, and this is something I only thought of after I wrote out this recipe, was that I did not sprinkle some finishing salt on top of them, just for that extra pop of flavor. That being said though, these are definitely a much better improvement than the burnt, tooth-breaking oatmeal paperweights I was forced to serve that one time(I wish I could say that my experiences cooking with that fourth teammate got better, but ironically the only class my team and I did well with was the time she called off sick, because she wasn’t there, standing in the way and not doing anything or taking her sweet time when we only have 90 minutes to get through three to four recipes).

Makes 24 cookies:
1 stick unsalted butter, browned
1 cup dark brown sugar
1 egg
3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup oat flour
1g finely grated tonka bean
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
a pinch of salt
a pinch of ground cinnamon
1/2 cup dark chocolate, chopped
1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate, chopped
1/2 cup Valrhona Azelia

In a bowl, mix together the butter, sugar, and egg until combined. Allow the mixture to cool down to room temperature before mixing in the flours, tonka, baking powder and soda, salt, and cinnamon. Then fold in the chocolates. Allow your dough to chill for at least 1 hour before scooping into 24 even portions. Place each piece of dough onto parchment-lined sheet trays, spacing them 2 inches apart. Bake at 375 degrees F for 14 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through the baking process.