The $250 Neiman Marcus Cookie

$250 Neiman Marcus Cookie

Ingredients: (This recipe may be halved.)

2 cups unsalted butter (4sticks=2c)

4 eggs

2 tsp pure vanilla extract

2 cups sugar

2 cups light brown sugar

4 cups all-purpose flower

5 cups blended oatmeal***

2 tsp baking soda

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

24 oz semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 8oz chocolate bar (I prefer Ghirardelli 60% dark)grated***

3 cups chopped walnuts (pecans or almonds are also good)

1 1/2 c dried cranberries( optional, they add as extra pop of color and the special diva touch. It is a perfect way to jazz up this cookies for the holidays.)

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

**In order to make the blended oatmeal it is time to break out one of my favorite kitchen co-stars, The Food Processor. Make sure to ask Santa for one of these babies! I use mine almost every day. Put your 5 cups of oatmeal in the food processor and process them until they become a loose course like flour. Measure out the rest of the dry ingredients (flour, baking power and soda, salt) and shift them into a bowl then add the blended oats and set aside.For a little extra diva touch reserve 1 of the cups of whole oats to add to the cookie dough this is totally optional though. This will give the cookies nice texture.

 With the butter at room temperature combine both the brown and white sugar to the softened butter and cream together. You will want to use a kitchen aid mixer for this recipe, the dough is very thick and sticky. You could do it with a hand mixer but it would be quite the workout.

If you don’t have a standing mixer, now is a good time to put it on your Christmas List as well, they are a great investment. Every Diva needs a good co-star once in a while and the Kitchen Aid will never leave you hanging and unlike a tenor they will never try to steal your spotlight. Ok back to the cookies.

Next add the eggs one at a time, then add the 2 tsp Vanilla. Make sure you are using good quality Vanilla. It really makes a difference. While the egg, butter, and sugar mixture is mixing slowly add the dry ingredient mixture to the wet ingredients.

*** Now don’t close the curtain on the food processor just yet. It has one more song to sing, La Canta di Chocolate. The original Neiman Marcus recipe calls for grated chocolate but boy is that a messy tedious job. Instead I break up the chocolate bar into my food processor, share the spotlight, and let it do its thing. Pulse the chocolate until it becomes grate size pieces, it will feel like course cocoa power. Then add it to dough.

Lastly time to add the fun stuff, chocolate chips and nuts. At this point the dough is very thick so you may have to fold the chips and nuts in by hand, it’s a good arm workout. When all the goodies are well incorporated into the cookie dough you are ready to form the cookies. My favorite tool for this job is a mini ice-cream scooper. If you don’t have one, an old-fashioned table-spoon will work just fine. Place your cookie dough on a sheet pan leaving enough space in between each cookie and then get these babies into the oven. Bake at 375 for about 6-8 minutes.

Lets them cool or if you are like me and can’t wait any longer pour yourself a glass of cold milk and dig in.