oatmeal raisin cookies from the all-american cookie book.* perfectly dense and deliciously chewy, these babies are everything a great cookie should be. 

*i received this book for hanukkah a few years ago, and it’s probably the only cookbook i use on a regular basis. the author, nancy baggett, is a true cookie connoisseur; for every recipe in the book, she’s got a back story to go with it. for instance, did you know that the earliest oatmeal raisin cookie recipe appeared in a church cookbook published way back in 1906? it wasn’t until 1910 that quaker oats put a cookie recipe on its box.