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This week on The Great DPPL Bake-Along:

We bake chocolate chunk oatmeal cookies, a sweet treat inspired by If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff and illustrated by Felicia Bond.

We’ll share our results, our recipes, and a little bit about our chosen stories on this blog.

AND we invite YOU to bake along with us.

Share what you make by tagging us with #DPPLBakes, send us your favorite recipes, or just enjoy reading our entries.

The Book:

If you give a mouse a cookie, he's going to ask for a glass of milk. When you give him the milk, he'll probably ask you for a straw. When he's finished, he'll ask for a napkin.

-If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff and illustrated by Felicia Bond

Reserve the book here.

This book was the first in the If You Give a...series.

A circular story, the mouse keeps asking for item after item (how very toddler-esque) and the boy becomes more tired as he gives, helps, and cleans up after the mouse.

You can give a pig a pancake, give a dog a donut. 

And one memorable morning during the stay at home order, reading If You Give a Cat a Cupcake inspired me to break out a muffin mix (the breakfast cupcake) and we had a delightful time making and eating.

This time, it was Mouse's turn!

The Bake:

I used my favorite cookie recipe, this chocolate chunk oatmeal recipe by Anne Burrell on Food Network's website.

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup rolled oats

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup granulated sugar

2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

12 ounces block dark chocolate, coarsely chopped

1 cup walnuts, chopped

Large flake sea salt, for garnish

Directions

• Preheat the oven to 350.
• Grab all your ingredients and tools needed. Realize your stand mixer is dusty, so wash the bowl. Remember that the water had just been turned off to repair a broken water line, so resign yourself to the fact you won't be eating cookies for lunch.
• Resume the recipe once the water has been turned back on. Luckily, your butter is truly room temperature now.
• In your stand mixer bowl (or large mixing bowl), combine the brown sugar, granulated sugar, and butter with the paddle attachment (or electric beater) until light and fluffy. Sneak a taste--yup, it's sugary.
• Add one egg and beat it into the mixture, then add the next.
• Now the vanilla. Smells great already.
• If you're a person who likes to follow directions exactly, mix your dry ingredients together in a small bowl. That's the flour, oats, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt. Gradually add the mixture into the butter/sugar mixture and blend until just combined.
• If you like to wash one last dish, just measure out each dry ingredient and slowly add them one by one to your mixture. Works just as well.
• Stir in the chocolate and walnuts. I just used a bag of semi-sweet chocolate chunks (SO GOOD) but if you want to chop chocolate, you do you.
• Make 2 tablespoon-size balls onto an ungreased cookie sheet.
• Bake for 12-13 minutes. 
• When they come out, immediately sprinkle each cookie with sea salt.
• Let cool for 2-3 minutes before moving to a cooling rack and immediately eating 3 of them.

Tips and tricks

• I used a cookie scoop, which speeded up the process immensely and made the cookies all the same size so there was no issue with baking.
• Change your chocolate, nuts, make it vegan--any way to suit you.
• The sprinkle of salt is not optional. Make sure it's flaky salt, not your usual table salt.
• Don't have time to bake from scratch? A tube of cookie dough is the best thing to keep in your fridge. A good way to make just a couple of cookies, and it's just a fun activity to do if you're reading a book where cookies are involved. Nothing might be more comforting than a fresh-from-the-oven chocolate chip cookie.

We hope you enjoyed this edition of The Great DPPL Bake-Along.

Check back in two weeks for another delicious installment!