Recipe: Mom’s chocolate chip cookies

Mom’s chocolate chip cookies

Total time: 45 minutes, plus cooling time

Servings: Makes 2 dozen cookies.

Note: This recipe comes from my mother, who was a home ec teacher. It’s the one she taught me and my sister, and our friends from high school -- all of whom would gather in our kitchen after school. She added the oatmeal because it was a Quaker school. My mother made these cookies with Crisco and generic bags of chocolate chips. I use unsalted butter and coarsely chopped Valrhona chocolate (71%) for the chocolate chips. These are big cookies; if you want smaller ones, simply decrease the amount of dough spooned out and bake for a shorter period of time.

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter

3/4 cup white sugar

1 cup dark brown sugar

2 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 1/2 cups (10.6 ounces) flour

1 1/4 teaspoons kosher salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats, preferably Quaker

3 cups (14 ounces) semi-sweet chocolate chips or coarsely chopped chocolate

1. Heat the oven to 350 degrees.

2. In the bowl of a standing mixer, mix the butter and sugars on medium speed until very well combined, about 1 minute. Add the eggs, one at a time, and the vanilla and mix until combined.

3. Add the flour, salt and baking soda directly into the bowl and mix on medium speed until well combined, about a minute. Scrape the sides of the bowl and make sure that the dough on the bottom is mixed too. Add the oats and the chocolate and mix it up briefly, until combined. At this point, you can refrigerate the dough or bake the cookies immediately.

4. Line trays with parchment paper and spoon out big balls of dough, about one-quarter cup, onto the parchment. Using your fingers, squash the balls down a little. Because these are big cookies and they’ll spread during backing, put 6 balls of dough on each tray.

5. Bake the cookies until they just start to brown around the edges, rotating the trays halfway so they bake evenly, about 15 minutes. Remove the cookies to a rack to cool. Repeat with all of the cookie dough. If you don’t want to bake them right away, or have time to bake only some of them, the dough will keep, well-wrapped, for a few days in the refrigerator. Once baked, the cookies will keep for up to 4 days in an airtight container or for up to a month frozen.

Each cookie: 272 calories; 3 grams protein; 38 grams carbohydrates; 2 grams fiber; 13 grams fat; 8 grams saturated fat; 38 mg. cholesterol; 24 grams sugar; 122 mg. sodium.

Note: This recipe was written by former L.A. Times staff writer Amy Scattergood.