My Favorite Holiday Cookies ---No Bake Something or Other

Now for something a little different! The Curvy Girls fun recipe exchange finally got me motivated to do some baking. With illnesses, photo shoots, Abby's birthday, and our anniversary, I've had zero energy to do anything more than the bare minimum around here. At least I got all my shopping done! :)

Now about the cookies. They're called No-Bake Chocolate Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies, or something like that. If anyone knows a shorter name for them, I'd love to hear it! When I was a kid, I'd spend a week at my grandparents a couple times a year. My Gumma was addicted to recipes, cookbooks, and cooking shows. And this was before the internet, and even the Food Network! I'm so showing my age here, aren't I? Because of her recipe obsession, I have no idea where this recipe actually came from, but it's so good! To keep me busy while visiting, we always did some sort of baking--or no-baking, in this case--and these were my absolute favorite cookies. They're quick, they're easy enough for my childhood self to do most of the work, and they're fantastic. When I got older and moved out of my mom's house, I asked my Gumma for a bunch of my old favorite recipes, and this was the first one I asked for. Now, I'm so fortunate to share this recipe and make keep the tradition going with my own girls. Two of my helpers:




No-Bake Chocolate Oatmeal Peanut Butter Cookies
(seriously, anyone have a shorter name?)

1/3 C. Peanut Butter
3 C. Quick-Cooking Oats (NOT Old Fashioned)
1 tsp. Vanilla
1 stick butter (her recipe was so old it calls for Oleo!)
1/2 C. Milk
1/3 C. Cocoa
2 C. Sugar (plain old granulated sugar)

In a big bowl, mix the peanut butter, oats, and vanilla, and set aside. It doesn't have to be mixed together evenly, just throw everything in the bowl and call it good.

Hi!


Lay out a bunch of wax paper on your counter for spooning out the "dough" later. You'll want all this stuff done ahead of time because it sets really quickly as soon as it starts to cool.

In a saucepan, add the rest of the ingredients and cook over medium-low heat.



You want it to get to a hard boil and stay there for a good couple minutes.



It helps if you have some cute child labor handy you can outsource the stirring to because it's pretty boring. Getting the mixture to a hard boil is probably the most time-consuming part of the whole recipe. This is when we learned that Abby, my oldest, is now too tall to stand on a chair to stir. Sniff! Time to get out the stepstool.



Scolding her sisters who wanted on the chair with her. :)




I've never owned a candy thermometer, so I always do the cold water, soft ball test. Pour a little in a cup of cold water and move it around. If you can grab it and form a soft ball, it's ready. I'm about 6,800ft above sea level, so I've learned the hard way to not quite go that cooked with it or they end up dry and crumbly. If you're not up high like me, you'll want a soft ball. I have no idea what temperature that would be with a candy thermometer, but I'd love to know if you do!

This is what it looks like when it's NOT ready. My help got bored and disappeared at this point, so I wasn't able to get a soft ball picture. And mine wasn't quite there yet anyway so it wasn't pretty.



3. Once you're cooked stuff is ready, you'll need to move fast! Dump the hot stuff in the bowl with the oat mixture and stir it until it's all combined well. As soon as it's done, spoon it out onto your wax paper. Again, you need to work quickly because it sets as soon as it cools. And it cools fast! By the time you're done spooning it all out and get all your cookie-making dishes washed, they'll be set enough to eat. Yum!