Not Your Grandma’s Oatmeal Cookies

NYGOC

1 c margarine softened

1 c sugar

1 c brown sugar (packed)

2 eggs

2 tsp. vanilla

3 c flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1 1/2 c oats

2 bars of Hershey chocolate, chunked into bits

2 c white chocolate chips

1 c nuts (either pecans, walnuts, almonds)

1 c flaked coconut

Cream margarine and sugars, add egg and vanilla. Mix powder, soda, salt and flour together and add slowly. Toss in the oats. Remove from mixer and add chocolates, nuts, and coconut. The dough will be quite thick, hands work great.

In the palm of your hand, roll a doughnut hole sized ball and place on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake in a 350 oven for approx. 14 mins. Remove and cool on a wire rack, store inside an airtight container.

Grandma Bean’s Ginger Snaps

If you love settling down on the couch with a bowl of vanilla icecream and a bag of Mother’s ginger snaps, this is the recipe for you. These break-your-teeth-off cookies have just the right bite and are perfect for fall!

Grandma Beans Ginger Snaps

3/4 c butter (marg. works too)

1 c granulated sugar

1 c brown sugar

1 c molasses

1 T baking powder

5 c flour

1 T ginger

1/8 t salt

1/2 c cold water

Cream butter and sugars. Stir in molasses to which soda has been added. Sift dry ingredients and combine with sugars alternating with water. Drop by tsp. on greased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 for 15 mins. Cookies will be soft and waxy when taken from the oven. Remove from sheet and let cool. Variation: Roll in sugar and flatten with a fork.

~Recipe from Melody Bingham

Goof-Proof Chocolate Chip Cookies

If my life was somehow hanging in the balance and all I had to do to save myself or the ones that I love was to make chocolate chip cookies – we’d all be pushing up daisies. That is, until I found this recipe for the cookie-crippled like me. These actually turn out soft and not pools of goo resembling something of a cookie afterthought.

Cream the shortening and sugars then add the eggs and vanilla with a flip of a switch, then measure out the dry.

Fluff with a fork and slowly dump it in.

I said SLOWLY!!!

That’s better, keep it going a few seconds longer, just until…

it pulls clean from the sides. That way we don’t have to wash the bowl. Just kidding.

Add the chippage. Yeah, I just made up a new word.

This time I thought I’d try something different since the chips were gargantuan. I rolled some dough and stuck a bit of edible love in the center.

Line them up on an ungreased sheet so that these belly-bombs can practice their expanding powers; like what will happen to my thighs after eating them.

Look! They’re puffy and not piles of goopey-grossness that harden to the point of needing to be fully submerged in a tall, cool glass of milk just so you don't ruin all that dental work you spent the kids college fund on.

The moment of truth. Deflation within acceptable standards while cooling.

Success!!! Yummy goodness to be devoured by rabid wolves, bears, and webolos? If I can do it, so can your three year old.

Goof-Proof Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 cup shortening (butter flavor's best)

3/4 cup sugar

3/4 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp. vanilla

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. baking soda

2 1/2 cups flour

1 bag (or half) of chocolate chips

Nuts if you want'em.

Cream shortening and sugars. Add eggs and vanilla. Mix dry and slowly add. Stir until it pulls clean, scoop or form into balls. Bake at 375 for 8-10 min. Cool 1 min. on sheet before removing to rack. Store in airtight container.