A good friend of mine from high school is in town and staying with us. She is always a fun houseguest, and it is a nice opportunity to relax a little. Having houseguests is always a good excuse to bake, and when a cookie craving struck everyone late last night, I decided to indulge it. The collective consensus was in favor of oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. I used the recipe on the lid of the Quaker oats box, substituting chopped callebaut 61% chocolate for the raisins.

As I started portioning out the dough (with my new cookie scoop that I adore) I realized that the recipe on the lid didn’t include salt. As a strong believer in salt in baked goods, and everything else for that matter, I decided to make a variation by sprinkling fleur de sel on top of the cookie before baking. The plain ones were good but the fleur de sel took them to the next level. I will definitely sprinkle all of them next time.

I also made a raspberry variation by folding whole fresh raspberries into a portion of the dough that turned out quite well. The tart soft bites of raspberry provide nice contrast to the sweet chewiness of the cookie.

My final variation was not so successful. I mixed pieces of leftover blood-orange marshmallows into the dough and during baking they melted into a big mess.

They tasted good, even though the marshmallow flavor was barely there, but boy were they ugly! I am going to keep trying to find a way to incorporate marshmallows into cookies successfully, if anyone has done it, let me know! Maybe they need to be added towards the end of the baking time a topper. I will keep experimenting.