Outrageous Chocolate Chip Cookies

These are chocolate chip cookies with the volume turned up. Peanut butter bulks up the base, rolled oats add chewy texture, and the result is a cookie sturdier than a Toll House and richer than a classic peanut butter cookie. They have heft.

Use smooth peanut butter, not natural. The oil-separated, swimming-pool-style natural varieties throw off the fat-to-solids ratio and yield greasy, flat cookies. Standard supermarket peanut butter (the kind that holds its swirl pattern when you stir it) is what this recipe was built around.

Don’t overbake. Pull these from the oven when the edges are light golden but the centers still look slightly underdone. They will firm up on the sheet during the one-minute rest. Bake until the middle looks fully cooked and you end up with crispy pucks, not the chewy targets the name promises.

Quick oats or old-fashioned rolled oats both work, but they give different textures. Quick oats vanish into the dough; old-fashioned oats stay visible and chewy. Old-fashioned is the more outrageous choice.

Pro Tips

• Use a small cookie scoop for uniform size and even baking.
• Press a few extra chips on top of each dough mound before baking for a bakery-style finish.
• Cool 1 minute on the sheet, then transfer to a rack; cookies set as they cool.
• Store with a slice of bread in the container to keep them soft for days.

Variations

• Add a handful of chopped peanuts for double peanut flavor and crunch.
• Swap semi-sweet chips for chunks of milk chocolate or peanut butter chips.
• Sprinkle flaky sea salt on top before baking for a sweet-salty finish.