Mmm....cookies!

Since David and I finally saw the end to our commissary stand-down last week, we finally have milk in the house. And since we have milk, I thought that we should definitely have cookies!

Thanks to my friends moving in October, May, May, and June, my cabinets are fully stocked with flour, various kinds of sugar and a variety of chocolate chips & chunks. So I usually don't have to worry about whether I have cookie ingredients. Also, my cookies were practically free...even the butter had been willed down to me when my friend Stacy left the island in the end of May.
I decided on a recipe that my friend Tana posted on ScrapVillage this morning. The interesting thing about this recipe is that it has oatmeal, but the oatmeal is ground up in the food processor, so you can't see it or really feel it in the cookies. The verdict is still out on whether or not I can taste it. Tana said that she divided the batch in half before putting in the chips and put butterscotch chips in half of the batch and chocolate chips in the other half. I thought that sounded good, but also wanted to have some with both chips, so I split mine into what I thought was roughly thirds.

I made the plain butterscotch first, and got 15 cookie scoop-fulls.

When I took those out of the oven, they seemed a little flat and kind of squishy. I don't know...something was strange about them and it made me think that I left out an ingredient. I said, "I wouldn't have left out an ingredient," but looked over the recipe again. I was right... I didn't leave out an ingredient. I left out two ingredients. Salt & cream of tartar.
My chocolate chip cookies had already been scooped out and waiting to go into the oven on their own baking sheet, but I decided to scoop them back into the bowl and add the salt & cream of tartar.

These turned out much fluffier looking.

They were also tastier, but I think that might have been partly because I think the butterscotch ones are just a little too butterscotchy.

I must not be very good at eyeballing "thirds" because while I got 15 butterscotch cookies and 16 chocolate chip cookies, my "best of both worlds" batch ended up yielding 24 cookies. The first set to go in the oven (on a baking stone) turned out browner than the others, but I haven't been able to taste one yet, because I'm beginning to feel sick from tasting the dough and cookies. I usually need to taste the cookies twice when I bring them out of the oven--once because I just can't wait, and then again when they have cooled a few minutes and no longer fall apart when I try to take it off the cookie sheet.

If you want to taste for yourself rather than taking my word for it, try the recipe:
BEST CHOCOLATE/BUTTERSCOTCH CHIP COOKIES EVER

1 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup white sugar
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup oats, ground up in the blender. (I blended for about 1 minute so it was mostly fine but still a few larger flakes)
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp hot water
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cream of tarter
1 1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 1/2 cups butterscotch chips
OR -- 2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips and 1 cup chopped walnuts
OR -- 2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips and 1 cup milk chocolate chunks

1. Preheat oven to 350
2. Cream together butter, and sugars until smooth. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Dissolve baking soda in hot water and mix in. Add salt and cream of tarter. Mix in flour and oats. Stir in chips/nuts. I separated the dough and made half the batch chocolate, half butterscotch.
3. Drop by large spoonfuls (about golf ball size) onto cookie sheet and bake for about 10 minutes or until edges are nicely browned. I used a heavy black cookie sheet and a baking stone. The cookie sheet took about 10 minutes, the baking stone 12.

P.S. I don't think this matters at all but I used 2 large egg yolks only and added 1 extra tsp hot water -- because my son is allergic to egg whites.