After having a few glorious days of sunshine the rain has returned to the Pacific Northwest. What do I like to do more than anything when it rains? Bake! Not particularly friendly to the waistline but oh so good for the soul. This cookie recipe has been in my family for years. My great-grandma passed it down to my grandma who passed it down to my mom who passed it on to me.
It is very unique and one of the cookies that I most frequently get asked to share the recipe for. The base of the cookie melts in your mouth, sort of like a shortbread or sandy cookie but the added goodies, coconut, oats, rice krispies and nuts give it the most divine taste and texture.
Here is what you’ll need:
1 cup sugar (plus a little extra for flattening)
1 cup brown sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp soda
1 tsp cream of tarter
1 cup butter (softened)
1 cup oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
3 1/2 cups flour
1 cup coconut
1 cup old-fashioned oats
1 cup crisp rice cereal (rice krispies)
1/2 nuts, chopped (walnuts are my preference)
Start by combining the first nine ingredients until they are smooth. You may need to scrape the bowl once or twice. Add the flour and beat for one minute. Stir in the remaining ingredients. The consistency of the dough will be a bit soft. You might think that you forgot to add all of the flour. I promise, you didn’t. It’s just the nature of the dough.
We don’t regularly eat rice krispies here so I buy just enough for this recipe in the bulk section at my local grocery store. No use in letting an entire box go stale. Although you could just make batch after batch of cookies to use up a box. 🙂
I have always used walnuts when making these cookies. It’s the way that my mom always made them. Walnuts were very abundant in the part of California I grew up in so I developed a taste preference for them. Here in Oregon, people may want to substitute hazelnuts or those of you in the South may prefer pecans. What I’m trying to say is that the recipe can be adapted to your personal taste preferences. You can even omit the nuts if you have an allergy or aversion to them.
When the dough is thoroughly mixed, drop rounded tablespoons full onto an ungreased or parchment lined baking sheet. The original recipe instructions say to drop a rounded teaspoonful onto the cookie sheet but let’s be honest, who eats teaspoonful sized cookies? Not this girl! I also don’t eat just one.
After you have the cookie dough on the baking sheet you will need to flatten the cookies with the bottom of a glass dipped in sugar. Slightly dampen the bottom of the glass for the first dip in sugar. After that, the oil and butter from the cookies should allow enough sugar to attach to the bottom of the glass for flattening the remaining cookies .
Bake at 350 degrees for 10 – 14 minutes. I always bake two cookie sheets at a time so I like to flip the sheets around and put the bottom sheet on the top and top sheet on the bottom half way through cooking in order to insure even baking. That’s a little trick I learned when my mom owned a fundraising business that sold cookies and muffins. The cookies are done when they are slightly browned around the edges.
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