Our favorite cookie recipe + a holiday report

Chatting new traditions and old, plus the cookies I bake every year 🍪

Happy December! How was your Thanksgiving weekend? From both a scheduling and satiety standpoint, ours was very full—all it was missing was an ‘E.’

You see, last month I ordered a “Merry Christmas” garland and was dismayed when it arrived without its ‘E.’ Its absence felt like a metaphor for the year, or maybe a new idea for a children’s picture book—one or the other or both.

I considered sending the garland back (return reason code: E), but that felt silly since the whole thing would surely be chucked, and I couldn’t think of anything less merry than a perfectly good Christmas garland decaying in a dump somewhere. So I asked my daughter if she’d decorate an ‘E,’ and with a little watercolor and stickers, we were merry once more!

And thus, a new holiday tradition was born. We decided that every year, the house will be officially jolly once an ‘E’ has been decorated for the garland. I plan to note the year each one was made, then store them in an album I’ll refuse to get rid of, even though no one ever looks at it. After all, what are the holidays without a heavy does of sentimentality?

Our Thanksgiving weekend had a number of other highlights, including decorating this year’s tree, which I must say is a favorite in recent memory. Just look this beauty:

Every year, the minute our tree is up, I’ve lamented it needs MORE! LIGHTS! Yet I never get around to buying them, the tree gets taken down, lights stowed away, and I forget until the next year.

I was halfway through stringing lights onto the tree when I remembered my annual lament. My husband Joe offered to run to Walgreens to buy more lights and put an end to this multi-year misery. Ok, just two more strands, I said, estimating another 200 lights would provide the incandescence I was after. Finally! A tree that would shine golden, a beacon of warmth and hope amidst the harsh 50 degree temps of a San Francisco winter!

Then he came home with two strands of three hundred lights each.

Here’s a holiday PSA: don’t throw out those tiny packets filled with extra light bulbs and fuses. Because “more is more” seemed like a great idea until it wasn’t. Adding 600 more lights to your strands will ensure a blown fuse 100% of the time. Three fuse replacements (!!), an extension cord, and multiple outlets later, we were back in business.

As we got to decorating, I was in a sentimental-meets-crafty mood after the ‘E,’ and had the idea for us to each fill out small cards with a 2024 gratitude list on one side, and a 2025 wishes list on the other. Our cards are affixed to the tree with red velvet ribbon and seeing them makes me so happy! On my four-year-old’s gratitude list:

• Sparkles

• Fall

• Rainbow chocolate (reader, I’m not sure what this is, but doesn’t it sound fabulous?)

• Hummingbirds

• Rainbow lights

• Dresses

• Fish (???)

• School friends

• The creek we live next to

As for me, I’m grateful for the usual: family, my patio garden, also hummingbirds (they stop by to sip at our flowers and it just makes me the happiest), SF, sunsets, the beach, my health, music, art, my bed, friends, and last but not least, my daughter’s preschool.

My 2025 wishes are New Year’s resolutions come early: making art just because, moving my body more, LOVE, self-acceptance, working/focusing on what matters, and more days at the local museums. Sounds like a perfect year to me.

Anyway, it was a fun little activity to do together and I highly recommend this for your own tree, if you put one up. If not, they’d look cute on a mantle, strung from a wreath, or written on paper snowflake cutouts. (If you have kiddos, everything about this doubles as an art/coloring activity for a rainy/snowy day!)

I can’t remember exactly why oatmeal chocolate chip cookies became the Thanksgiving cookie in our family. It’s definitely a post-college thing, when Joe told me they were his favorite, but rarely enjoyed them since they’re hard to find, what with raisins being the default oatmeal cookie garnish. I took the challenge to heart and developed a cookie recipe that has become a beloved, essential aspect of our Thanksgiving eating traditions since at least 2008. In fact, I published a version of this recipe on my old blog that very year.

Since then, it’s evolved here and there. For example, I now go to great pains to rest the dough before baking. (I say “great pains” because it’s truly torture waiting to eat one of these cookies after mixing up a batch!)

If you too are an oatmeal chocolate chip lover, or just want something a little different this holiday season, the recipe is below! Trust me when I say: these are crowdpleasers. They also come highly recommend on a holiday morning, with bed head and shades:

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Makes ~30 cookies

• 1-1/4 cups AP flour

• 2 tsp baking soda

• 1/4 tsp kosher salt

• 1 cup (usually 2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature

• 1 cup packed light brown sugar

• 1/2 cup granulated sugar

• 2 extra large eggs

• 2 tsp vanilla extract

• 3 cups quick cooking rolled oats (I use these.)

• 1 cup good quality dark chocolate chips, such as Guittard; more if you want the cookies extra chocolatey

Directions:

1. In a small to medium bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and salt. Mix well, then set aside.

2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar and granulated sugar. You can do this with a spoon, but it’s best done with either an electric hand mixer or a stand mixer. Creaming sugar and fat together heavily influences the final texture of the cookie, as beating the sugar granules and fat together creates air in the cookie. You’ll know the mixture is well creamed when the yellow color lightens, and the mixture looks smooth, yet fluffy.

3. Next, beat in the eggs, one at a time. With the beater still running, add in the vanilla extract. Mix to combine.

4. Add the flour mixture into the creamed mixture, and fold together with a spatula or wooden spoon until blended. Add in the oats and chocolate chips. Continue folding together until the oats and chocolate are well incorporated throughout the dough.

5. Transfer the dough to an air tight container and let rest in the refrigerator for at least 12 hours, up to 48 hours. You may find it beneficial to divide the dough into two containers (or wrap in plastic wrap as two separate discs) for ease of portioning later.

6. To bake: Preheat your oven to 350° F. Line two 10”x12” sheet pans with parchment paper.

7. To form the cookies, roll a golf ball size worth of dough in the palm of your hands to form a ball, and place on the parchment-lined baking sheet. Based on the size of your cookie ball, space them accordingly. (Remember that as the butter melts in the oven, the cookies will spread significantly.) I find that with dough balls slightly larger than golf balls, I can fit 9 per sheet pan.

8. Bake 15-20 minutes, or until the cookies are golden and the whole kitchen smells like cooked sugar and vanilla. If you prefer a softer, chewier cookie, bake on the shorter end of the spectrum. If you like a crispier cookie (me!), bake for closer to 20 minutes. Transfer the cookies to a rack to cool.

9. With any remaining dough, form the next batch of cookies, place on the sheet pans, and bake. Transfer the cookies to a rack to cool.

10. Enjoy warm or at room temperature! Store the cookies in airtight container, and don’t forget, they will soften up once stored.

NOTES

My recipes are nothing if not full of notes and “choose your own adventures”:

• Kosher salt: I use Diamond Crystal.

• Room temperature butter: If you are anything like me, you always forget to leave the butter out to soften. You can soften butter to room temp by cooking it gently in the microwave—say, 20-30 second increments at a power of 1 or 2. Give the sticks a squeeze between zappings to check for softness.

• Resting the dough: If you absolutely can’t wait, you can of course bake these cookies as soon as they are mixed. They will still be delicious! However, I find a minimum of 12 hours rest does wonders for caramelization and texture. The longest I ever let it rest was 48 hours and honestly? I think 12-24 hours rest is just as good.

• Chocolate: I prefer dark chocolate in this cookie. Look for a chip or wafer that is at least 63% cacao. You can also buy a semisweet bar of chocolate and chop it up to create chocolate shards. (Doing this would create uniformly chocolate-y bites, versus big chippy chunks of chocolate.) This year I went hog wild and used 74% wafers and 63% chips, hence the variable sizes of chocolate in the photos! Whole Foods sells a brand named Guittard which is one of two we used in cooking school, and is my personal favorite.

• Gluten- free option: the AP flour may be substituted with a 1:1 gluten free flour, such as Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free 1 to 1 Baking Flour.