There’s really not much better than a just-baked chocolate chip cookie, warm from the oven with squishy, melty bits of chocolate and crunchy pecans. These are good… really, really good.

I’m not exactly sure how many they make because I may have eaten one or two (dozen) from the cooling rack. I was working from home and they were just sitting there screaming “eat me!” and I thought it would be rude to refuse. But it was a long time ago i.e. last week, and I just don’t recall. I’m going to have to make them again and count.

If you like a chewy cookie with crunchy edges, erring towards the side of chocolate in the chocolate-to-cookie equilibrium, then these are the ultimate choc chip cookie. They’ve got rolled oats and dark chocolate chips, so they’re really almost a healthy option.

Makes 20-30 cookies

250g         butter
¾ cup       raw sugar
¾ cup       brown sugar
2              eggs
1½ tsp      vanilla
2 cups      plain flour
1 tsp        baking powder
1 tsp        bicarb soda
½ tsp       sea salt flakes, or ¼ tsp crushed table salt*
2½ cups   rolled oats (run 1 ½ cups through a food processor quickly until they resemble coarse breadcrumbs)
130 g       pecans
2 cups      bittersweet/semisweet chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 180C.
2. Beat the butter and sugars until creamy.
3. Mix in the eggs and vanilla.
4. Combine flour with baking powder, bicarb soda and sea salt flakes. Add to the rolled oats.
5. Add the flour mixture to the batter. Mix in the chocolate chips and pecans.
6. Use a medium cookie scoop to place the dough onto the tray. Press down gently to flatten, leaving enough room in between to expand.
7. Bake for 6-9 minutes or until the edges of the cookies are a light golden brown. It’s worth rotating baking trays halfway to make sure the cookies brown evenly.

Tips for awesome choc chip cookies:

• Don’t skip the salt – it enhances the flavour and also helps enhance the sweetness of the dark chocolate chips. Heston told me so.
• Don’t use chopped cooking chocolate for baking. I once bought premium couverture chocolate to use for cookies thinking the better the chocolate, the better the cookie – but it was not to be. Good quality cooking chocolate has higher levels of cocoa butter and isn’t designed to be heated to high temperatures, resulting in a grainy chocolate once baked.