The Infamous Neiman Marcus $250 Chocolate Chip Cookie: My Version

The week before Christmas I was reading Jane Green’s wonderful novel, Promises to Keep. At the end of each chapter she provided a recipe that was relevant to the story. One recipe was a copy of the infamous Neiman Marcus ‘$250 cookie’, which we all know by now is an urban legend that is actually several decades old and has traveled as far as South Africa in its origins.

That said, what intrigued me about the recipe was the use of ground oatmeal with the regular flour. I was also stunned by the enormous size of the batter the recipe would produce, given that it called for a total of nine cups of ground oatmeal/flour to a relatively lower proportion of butter in the traditional Tollhouse recipe.

Since I wanted to send cookies to friends and family for Christmas, I decided to give the recipe a try with some tweaks on my part. My changes are the addition of the three different types of chocolate for the chips, a teaspoon more vanilla than the original recipe, and the use of sea salt.

Urban legend or not…these are some of the best chocolate chip cookies I’ve ever made. I believe the addition of the ground oatmeal adds a lovely fulsome texture and nuttiness to the cookies that is not found in a flour only cookie. It’s similar to the effect you get with the use of whole wheat flour.

Give them a try…..and be prepared to share with the neighbors. I ended up with 80 generously sized cookies.

Ingredients:

2 cups butter 


4 cups flour 


2 tsp. baking soda 


2 cups granulated sugar 


2 cups brown sugar 


5 cups blended oatmeal (measure oatmeal and blend in blender or food processor to a fine powder) 


3 X 12 oz bags of chocolate chips (one each milk chocolate chips,semi-sweet chunks, dark chocolate chips) 


1 tsp. sea salt


4 eggs


2 tsp. baking powder 


3 cups chopped nuts (your choice, I like walnuts) 


1 Tablespoon vanilla

Directions:

1.    Cream together butter and sugar until fluffy. Add eggs one at a time. Then add vanilla.
2.  . Sift or mix with a fork flour and ground oatmeal, baking soda, salt, and baking powder.
3.    Combine flour mixture with butter mixture. Fold in chips and nuts.
4.   Roll batter into balls and place on parchment lined cookie sheets.
5.   Bake at 375 for 10 – 12 minutes.
6. .  Enjoy!