52 Cookies - Chapter 24

It was hot this week.  Too hot to bake.  So I didn't.  I didn't bake any cookies at all this week.  I did, however, do a little cooking on the stove in order to make some cookies.  These cookies are nothing new to most people.  They've been around forever, and to be honest, I may have actually made these before.  If I have, it was as a child and that's too long ago to remember. 

Considering...
   A.  the heat
   B.  5 baseball/softball games in 6 days
   C.  Evan's birthday and
   D.  preparations for Evan's birthday party...

I do believe a little cheating was in order.

No Bake Cookies were in order for this week.  Variations on this basic recipe can be found all over the place - on various websites and many, many church cookbooks, I am certain.  I got this recipe from the website Allrecipes.com  I had Jenna help me out with these this week.  We started off with a little lesson.  I asked her if she knew the difference between the oven and the stove. 

Her response:   "Uh, no."

Teachable moments, no matter how small.

I hope I'm not letting some of you down with such a lame recipe this week.  I have had several people, some of whom I don't know very well, tell me how very Martha Stewart-ish they think I am because of my blog and this whole cookie business.  I am certain Martha has likely never eaten a No Bake Cookie in her life.  She probably wouldn't even utter the words 'No Bake'. 

No Bake Cookies
Here's What You Need:
2 cups sugar
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 pinch salt
1/2 cup chunky or creamy peanut butter
3 cups quick cooking oats

Here's What You Do:
Cover a couple of cookie sheets with wax paper.  In a large saucepan, over medium heat, combine the sugar, cocoa powder, milk and butter.  Stir while the butter melts. 

Bring it to a boil.  Once it begins to boil, time it for exactly one minute.  Once your minute is up, remove the pan from the heat and add the vanilla, salt, peanut butter and oats.  Stir all ingredients.

Drop spoonfuls onto the wax paper. 

I used my small cookie dough scoop and it made nice, uniformed shaped and sized cookies.  Jenna's hand wasn't strong enough to work the mechanism on the scooper, so I gave her a spoon to use.  Then she lamented about how my cookies were perfect and hers were just blobs.  I told her that by the time she was my age and had made the number of cookies in her lifetime that I have made, her cookies would be perfectly shaped and sized too.  "And besides," I continued, trying to make her feel even better, "it's not like we're serving these to Martha Stewart!"  Jenna is more of a Paula Deen kind of girl anyway.