I’m making a pretty bold statement with this one, right?

Now, I’m not generally a fan of oatmeal cookies – but most of that stems from my hatred of raisins.  I hate raisins.  The texture, the taste, blech.  Why mar perfectly good crumb with a chewy, tough raisin?  Blech.

Throw some chocolate chips in the mix? That’s a cookie I can get on board with.

I’ve been working on the perfect oatmeal batter, and of course insist on chocolate chips rather than raisins, and I think I found it in this recipe.

The key to keeping these nice and chewy is to not overmix the batter.  So here you go:  the world’s best chewy chocolate chip oatmeal cookies.

First, you’ll cream together your butter and brown/white sugars.  Be sure to really fluff this mixture up – a good 4-5 minutes on medium – before adding anything else.

Then, add your eggs one at a time and then vanilla.   Mix until well blended.

As soon as you’re done blending, remove from your stand mixer or put your hand mixer away.  We’re continuing on manually.  You’ll add your dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, salt) to this mixture and blend with a spoon – do not overmix.

Taste liberally, because it’s pretty delicious at this point.  Then, ask your sous chef to help you mix in the oatmeal and chocolate chips. Ignore her mess as the oatmeal goes flying.  Make sure she gets to eat a few chocolate chips, of course.

After the oatmeal and chips are blended in gently (folded in, as they say), you’ll drop heaping teaspoons onto your baking sheets.

Then, because sprinkles make everything taste better, let your helper dump sprinkles on the cookies, if you’re into that sort of thing.   This step is, of course, completely unnecessary but we can’t make cookies without sprinkles in this house.  Or oatmeal.  Or waffles.  We like sprinkles.

The next part is, obviously, the easiest.  Bake for 10-12 minutes at 325-degrees.  Waiting eagerly by the oven door until they’re ready makes them cook faster, we think.