Cozy up with a cup of tea and some homemade oatmeal chocolate chip cookies still warm from the oven. All you need are a few pantry staples to pull off this recipe!
Beat butter and both sugars in a large mixing bowl with an electric mixer on high speed until creamy.
Add egg and vanilla and beat just until combined - do not overmix the egg or you'll get tough cookies.
Combine flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon in a small bowl. Add to egg mix and beat on low speed just until combined.
Fold in both types of oats, chopped pecans and chocolate chips (use a spatula here, or your mixer will get stuck).
Use a cookie scoop to scoop roughly 2-3 tablespoon portions of cookie dough. Place on a lined baking sheet (it's fine to place them close together at this point) and chill in the refrigerator for 30-60 minutes.
When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350°F. Bake in batches on lined baking sheets, cookies spaced 2 inches apart, for 12-15 minutes, or until lightly golden brown (they will still be very soft when they come out of the oven).
Cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes, then remove to a cooling rack to cool completely. Store in a cookie jar on the counter for 3-4 days.
Notes
Ingredient notes
Oats: I very strongly recommend using half quick oats and half old fashioned oats in this recipe. This nicely balances the texture of the dough to yield thick, soft cookies with a chew. If you use all quick oats, the cookies will spread more and turn out crisper. If you use all old fashioned oats, the cookies may turn out too thick/too dry.
Butter:
I use unsalted butter. If you use salted, reduce the salt in the recipe to a pinch.
Your butter should be softened for easy beating, especially if you’re making the dough without a mixer. To quickly soften butter, unwrap it and put it on a plate. Rinse a medium bowl (one that fits over your butter) with piping hot water, then immediately invert it over the butter. It should be nicely soft in 5-10 minutes.
If you need to use margarine for any kind of reason, use a margarine intended for baking.
Pecans: Adding the chopped nuts is absolutely optional and you can just skip them if you need to.
Different mix-ins: For a variation of the recipe, try different mix-ins! You can replace the chocolate chips with cranberries or raisins (see my oatmeal raisin cookies!), or use something fun like M&M baking chips, salted peanuts or butterscotch baking chips instead.
Recipe tips
Do not overmix the cookie dough, only beat until the ingredients are incorporated. You don’t need to cream the dough for several minutes like you would cake batter. If you overmix the dough, the cookies may come out tough.
I very strongly recommend sticking to the two kinds of oats in the recipe. If you change this, the texture of the cookies will change significantly.
Do not skip chilling the cookie dough. If you don’t chill it, the cookies will spread too much in the oven and turn out thin/crispy instead of soft and thick.
I always scoop the cookie dough before chilling – it may be counterintuitive, but the warm and soft dough is much easier to scoop, and the dough chills faster once shaped.
Do not overbake your cookies, or they will come out too crisp. The tops should look dry (the tops of the cookies start to look greasy from the melted butter about halfway through the baking time, bake the cookies right until the tops look dry/set and no longer greasy). The cookies are still soft when they are ready and need to cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before you’re able to remove them.