Maybe 10 years ago, I was on a road trip with my cousin, and came into a baggie of chocolate chip cookies made by one of her friends that were so toasty and chewy they haunted me until I tracked down the friend and asked for the recipe. She told me it came from an old edition of “Joy of Cooking” and was called “Chocolate Chip Cookies Cockaigne.”
The deliciousness had to do with the addition of finely chopped chocolate and the secret ingredient of ground oats, she said. The oats soaked up the generous amount of butter in the recipe and gave the cookies a caramelized flavor and chewy texture.
I’m an old cookbook collector. I have limited my collection to Alaska cookbooks only, except, kind of because of this recipe, old “Joy of Cooking” editions. I now have four, including my mother’s, but still I have not tracked down the actual recipe. I know it exists, and have found it adapted online. I also found a full-text archive version from the “Joy of Cooking All About Cookies” but naturally, that digital edition obscured the measurements. There are a number of “Joy of Cooking” recipes — including a plum cake, brownies, an almond torte and a chicken breast — in older editions called “Cockaigne.” It turns out that they are favorite family recipes, named for the summer home of the Rombauer-Becker family, who were the authors and editors of the cookbook. Irma Rombauer published the first cookbook in 1931 and her daughter Marion and grandson Ethan worked on subsequent editions. The word “cockaigne” refers to an imaginary land of plenty and luxury, a food paradise. Seriously, these cookies are so memorably delicious, they totally deserve the name.
With the help of my chef friend Jana Patterson, I’ve settled on the following adapted recipe. I use salted butter, because I like salted butter. I’ve bumped up the salt, slightly reduced the sugar, and used dark chocolate instead of milk. I blitz oats and the chocolate bar, separately, in the food processor. The original recipe also uses — I’m guessing here — but possibly a half a cup of walnuts, also super finely chopped or ground into a rough meal. If you are a walnut person, you could add those, too. Jana reduces the white sugar to a quarter cup and likes to take the pan out of the oven at 10 minutes and bang it once on the counter to make the cookies a little denser.
Chocolate Chip Cookies Cockaigne
(adapted from “Joy of Cooking: All About Cookies”)
Makes about 50 cookies
2 sticks salted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup white sugar
2/3 cup brown sugar
1 egg
2 tablespoons milk
1 tablespoon vanilla
1 2/3 cup all purpose flour
1 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/3 cup quick oats, ground in the food processor into a meal
1 cup dark chocolate chips
1 3-ounce dark chocolate bar, blitzed in the food processor
1/2 cup walnuts, ground in the food processor into a rough meal (optional)
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Line your cookie sheets with parchment paper. Whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a medium-sized bowl. Set aside. In the bowl of a standing mixer, beat butter and sugars until creamy. Add egg. Mix until incorporated and then add in milk and vanilla. Once the batter is smooth, with the mixer on low, shake in the flour mixture. Once that is incorporated, add oats, then nuts (if using), ground chocolate, and chocolate chips. Mix until oats, chocolate and optional nuts are evenly distributed, but not more. Using a 1 1/2 tablespoon cookie scoop, scoop the batter onto the pan/pans and bake for 10-12 minutes, until brown on the edges and just set in the middle. Allow to cool for 10 minutes on the pan before removing to a cooling rack.