Not only are these Oatmeal Chocolate Chip easy, but they are incredibly soft, buttery, and slightly spiced with cinnamon, nutmeg, and loaded with chocolate chips.

Thank you Mrs. Daphne Maxwell Reed AKA Aunt Viv for the Oatmeal Chocolate Chip recipe. I see why they’re your favorite.

I am a huge believer that food brings people together. I especially love when food brings people together for joyous occasions. I believe that food cures everything. I mean beyond the obvious, food hunger, it can make a bad day a not-so-bad day. Or it can make a great day an even better day.

“Food is the universal conduit for creating happy memories and cohesion”.

Luckily, I am not the only person who feels that way. I had the extreme pleasure of having a casual conversation with Mrs. Reid and during our conversation, I discovered and she and I share similar ideas about the purpose of food and how it should bring friends and families together. We both share that idea due to our childhood and upbringing.

Mrs. Reid and I come from a lineage of families who loves to cook and share food with loved ones around the dinner table. In addition, we both love to collect our family recipes and share them with the rest of the world. In her book, “Grace, Soul, and Mother Wit”, Mrs. Reid shares with us her family recipes that took her 35 years to collect and test. As I was browsing through her cookbook, I felt as though I was combing through a recipe Rolodex of dishes that her mother, Rosalee, created to feed her kids and recipes that Mrs. Reid has collected along her life journey that has been tested several times.

“With this cookbook, I open a door to my life. Please come in and make yourself feel at home.” – Daphne Maxwell Reid

Like many cookbook authors, Mrs. Reid released this book to share the recipes of her family and she has collected within the past 35 years, in hopes the food that is within the book will bring family and friends to the table without the assistance or need for smartphones and tablets. Her hope is to get people talking again and eat really good food that can’t be cooked within a minute in the microwave. Like me, she wants people to get cooking again and talking again, which are two elements that we fear are becoming an anomaly with changing times and technology.

I look forward to the day where I can pull my son in the kitchen with me and have him help me cut vegetables, knead the dough, and measure ingredients. With his generation, I know that cooking in the kitchen while pulling the recipe from an actual book is going to be a foreign concept to most of his friends. What isn’t realized is how therapeutic and nostalgic that can be. Especially around this time of year where baking and cooking is popular. In fact, because this is the season of cookies, I decided to make one of Mrs. Reid’s favorite recipes in the book, which are her Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Let me say, I see why these Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies is one of Mrs. Reid’s favorites. As I was making these cookies, I felt that she and I connected in an alternate universe where she was making these cookies for her husband when they were first married and me in the current year and time. Although this Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe seems to be as basic and straightforward as most cookie recipe, there is one ingredient that I must admit, I hesitated on adding, which was orange zest.

My thoughts on these Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

My initial thought was I didn’t want the cookies to taste as though it had an orange flavor. I am so glad I decided to ignore myself and add the orange zest and I am so glad I did. The zest does not make the cookies taste like orange in any way. The orange zest lifts up the flavor of the cookie in this strange and amazing way. It almost like it turns up the volume on each ingredient by 10. I definitely think I will be adding this trick to my cookies from now on.

Aside from adding the orange zest, the rest of the ingredients are what you would expect in baking cookies such as flour, sugar, brown sugar, chocolate chips, and old-fashioned oats. Although I must say, I did add 2 cups of quick oats and 1 cup of old-fashioned oats because I was worried the cookies would be too gritty for my personal taste. However, that was a personal choice. I am sure the recipe is delicious as is.

My husband must’ve eaten like 4 of these cookies within an hour. They are really good and they taste as if I was making something from Mrs. Reid’s grandmother or amazing Aunt. They are very comforting and perfect for the holidays.

Mrs. Reid’s book is a collection of recipes from the heart. They are dishes that tell a story about a place, time, and is connected to a story. For someone to put all of their recipes in the book is like they are putting their most prized memories and their heart in a book. Especially a book such as Mrs. Reid’s. She and I are alike in a few ways. Her book is like my blog. We both want to share food that helps to bring people together and the recipes we both share is connected to a story. Her hope, as well as mine, is for food to help you and your family create cherished memories that you will create and put in a blog or a book or whatever keepsake holder that makes sense for your generation.

If you are a fan of Mrs. Daphne Maxwell Reid like I am, you can check her out in Jacqueline and Jilly, premiering on streaming service UMC – Urban Movie Channel.

To buy her book, click here!

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe adapted from Daphne Maxwell Reid’s book, “Grace, Soul, and Mother Wit”.