Mrs. Fields $250 Cookies

This is the famous "$250 cookie recipe” that’s been circulating since the early internet days. Whether the backstory is true or not, the cookies are genuinely fantastic. Two cups of butter, four cups of sugar (split between white and brown), and a double hit of chocolate make these thick, rich, and dangerously addictive.

The trick that sets this recipe apart is grinding the oatmeal in a blender until it becomes a fine powder. That oat flour blends invisibly into the dough, adding body and a subtle nuttiness without the visible oat flakes. People will taste these and swear there’s no oatmeal in them.

Twenty-four ounces of chocolate chips plus an eight-ounce chocolate bar, grated, go into the dough along with three cups of chopped nuts. The grated chocolate melts into the dough during baking, creating pockets of pure fudgy chocolate between the chips. Golf ball-sized drops on the sheet and just six minutes in the oven produce cookies that are crisp at the edges and soft in the center.

Pro Tips

• Grind the oatmeal until it’s truly a fine powder. Coarse bits will make the cookie texture gritty instead of smooth.
• Six minutes sounds short, but these are large cookies and they continue baking on the hot sheet after you pull them. Overbaking dries them out.
• Cream the butter and sugars thoroughly until light and fluffy. This step builds the structure that keeps the cookies from going flat.
• Chill the dough for 30 minutes if it’s too soft to scoop. Warm dough spreads too much in the oven.

Variations

• Use dark chocolate chips and milk chocolate for the grated bar for layered chocolate flavor.
• Swap nuts for toasted coconut flakes for a tropical twist.
• Add a teaspoon of espresso powder to the dough to intensify the chocolate flavor.