Cookies at 4am

These are the cookies I mentioned in a previous post. They're very easy to make and use inexpensive ingredients.


Here's the list:

• 2 cups of sugar
• 1/3 cup of Crisco
• 1/4 cup of dry milk
• 1/2 cup of water
• 3 cups of rolled oats
• 1/4 cup of cocoa
• 1/2 cup of peanut butter
• 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla (or almond) extract

First assemble all the ingredients and the measuring cups you'll need.



Also make sure you have the recipe on hand. Here I have mine leaning against a electric skillet to make it easier to read. It's a tad stained since I've used it many times over the 20+ years since I copied it from the one my mother had. The recipe, not the frying pan!

Now here's what you do:

Mix sugar, shortning, milk and water in saucepan.
Heat until it boils, remove and add other ingredients.
Mix well, drop onto wax paper to cool. Store in tight
container.






The following pictures illustrate the instructions above.





First you combine the sugar, milk and Crisco in the saucepan.

















Then add the water to dissolve sugar and milk. Heat the saucepan until it reaches a boil.

















While the saucepan is heating gather all the rest of the dry ingredients together. I use a large bowl, beng careful to keep the peanut butter away from the sides so it won't stick. Damn stuff is like GLUE!













Here we have the saucepan at a boil. Be very careful with this mixture since boiling sugar will burn like few other things can. As you can see, it's roiling away quite nicely.












Remove the saucepan from the burner. Now you combine the dry ingredients into the once-boiling mixture. I add some oatmeal along with all the peanut butter and cocoa since the peanut butter doesn't blend in easily and you want to add it when the mix is quite hot. Once this is all blended together I add the rest of the oatmeal, as is pictured to the left.












Now you have a homogenous blend of all the ingredients except the almond (or vanilla) extract. Add that now that the mix has cooled off somewhat. Be sure to blend it in well since you don't want some cookies with too much extract!













Here's the cookies after being dropped off from a spoon onto sheets set on a counter. I like to use a silicon baking sheet but parchment paper or wax paper also work fine. The advantage of the silicon products is that they don't leave small bits of wax on the counter. And it's cooler to use silicon! LOL

This silicon sheet was made in France like those characters on Saturday Night Live.

By the way, I LOVE these baking sheets.