I don’t normally post recipes, although cooking is a big part of my life. It’s one of my favorite things to do actually. It’s funny that over the years people have made big assumptions that because I am career and business focused I’m not a homemaker or cook. And truth be told I wasn’t until my girls came along. Rachel Ray and Food Network taught me how to cook while I was a stay-at-home mom and I’ve loved it ever since. As the girls got older our pallet just continued to expand and we are now true foodies. Maybe even food snobs. We spend a lot of time talking about good food and trying new recipes. And our oldest two, now adults, are quite the cooks themselves.

My collection of holiday recipes has had the biggest impact on our family traditions, especially Thanksgiving. The girls expect my grandmother’s sweet potatoes, my mom’s homemade yeast rolls, and my lemon-parsley gravy. And my homemade cinnamon rolls for breakfast. We eat them while we watch the Macy’s Day Parade. Maybe this will be the year I finally blog our greatest holiday hits.

Over the last several years we’ve worked hard to get processed foods out of our recipes. We traded name-brand flour for organic flour from Sunrise Four Mill. Their flour is much easier on the gut than processed flour. And the biggest change has been trading white and brown sugar for Nova Maple Sugar. You will be shocked at how little flavor difference there is. Our recipes don’t taste like maple at all. Recipes with processed sugar are way too sweet for me now and just taste a bit off.

If you don’t have maple sugar sitting around or don’t want to spring for it (it’s a bit expensive for sure) just use white flour but use 1/2 a cup instead of 1 cup. In most recipes, a 1-to-1 substitution is sufficient but I wanted to put the sweetness in these cookies a bit over the top.

Enjoy! And let me know what you think!

Salted Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 Cup (2 sticks) Unsalted Butter, softened

1 Cup Packed dark brown sugar

1 Cup Maple sugar

2 large Eggs

2 teaspoons Vanilla extract

1 ¼ Cup All Purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon Baking soda

1 teaspoon (1/2 for dough, and 1/2 to sprinkle on top)

1 teaspoon fine sea salt

3 Cups Instant Oats

1 Cup dark chocolate chips

Directions

Preheat oven to 325°F.

1. Cream butter, brown sugar and maple sugar in mixer on medium speed until smooth, about 3 minutes. Beat in one egg at a time until combined. Add vanilla.

2. In a separate mixing bowl, whisk flour, baking soda and ½ tsp of fine sea salt and then add to butter and egg mixture and mix until combined.

3. Fold in oats and chocolate chips into entire mix with a wooden spoon until combined.

4. Drop dough by rounded tablespoons onto parchment-lined baking sheet two inches apart. Sprinkle the last of the sea salt with a pinch onto the top of each cookie. Bake for about 12-15 minutes. Allow to cool for 5 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.