Milk & Cookies

first four

In the past couple weeks I’ve talked to two different friends who both claim that the best cookies they’ve ever had were no bake cookies. The idea of no bake cookies was sounding really good to me because (a) the most fun part of cookie making is the stirring and all that, not the baking and (b) the heat from the oven plus summer heat plus lack of air conditioning can add up to some seriously unpleasant heat trapped in our upstairs bedroom on cookie nights.

But alas… despite my super advanced planning by asking for the recipes at least 12 hours before I needed them neither of these supposed best cookie recipes have materialized. Anyways, I looked around online and apparently there is a very popular no bake cookie recipe which sounds a lot like the one my friend Alex was talking about. So I will try it out and she can tell me if it looks right or not.

first four at a boil

Recipe:

• 1/2 cup butter
• 2 cups sugar
• 4 Tbsp. cocoa powder
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup peanut butter
• 2 tsp. vanilla
• 3 cups dry quick set oats

Here’s the thing about no bake cookies. Instead of baking them, you cook them on the stove. I thought this was cheating a little because cooking and baking are very similar. But I guess until I can find a way to get cocoa powder, sugar, milk, and butter to turn into chocolate without heating it up (blender?), I’m stuck with cooking.

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So you put the first 4 ingredients in a large pot and bring them to a boil. Boil for 1 minute, not more! Then remove from heat and mix in the next 3 ingredients. I decided to add the vanilla and peanut butter first because that seemed to make the most sense. But maybe it doesn’t matter. The peanut butter and vanilla mix in pretty easily.

Then you just spoon the batter onto parchment paper and let it cool and harden. Even when it’s cool, it’s not 100% hardened, it’s a little mushy. Oh well.

Personally, I like these cookies but I think they’re a little too sweet. Maybe next time I will cut down the sugar to 1 1/2 cups or so.

P.S. There are many copies of this recipe on the internet, but one of them claims that these cookies are healthy. Apparently the oats and peanut butter give this cookie a low glycemic index. Just tell yourself that while you’re eating them.