Ingredients

1 cup shortening
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
2 beaten eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
1 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. soda
3 cups quick-cooking oatmeal
1/2 cups nuts (optional)

Directions

Cream shortening and sugars; add eggs and vanilla. Add dry ingredients; add oatmeal and nuts. Shape in rolls; wrap in wax paper and chill thoroughly. Slice 1/2 inch thick. Bake on ungreased cookie sheets at 350°F for 10 minutes. (May also be cooked without being chilled.)

Notes

by Hannah

So these oatmeal crispies cookies are only the second recipe I’ve attempted in my quest to bake my way through my Grandma’s recipes, but they are going to be hard to beat.  I’ve always been a huge fan of oatmeal cookies (and cookie dough) as long as they don’t have raisins, and these are seriously my new favorite.

I’m pretty sure I must have had them before…when I was younger and my mom was more into baking with having little kids at home to feed, I’m sure she must have made them at some point.  Though I was a very picky child so it’s very possible I may have snubbed them because they didn’t have chocolate or I didn’t appreciate oatmeal cookies back then.  It’s also very possible that my mom may have ruined them by adding raisins to them…

Either way, after I made this batch I was told they are my dad’s favorite of all the cookies my grandma would make when he was growing up, and rightly so because they are absolutely delicious. They are so nutty and chewy and full of brown-sugary goodness that they don’t even need chocolate (or nasty raisins). I’ll have to make another batch when my dad comes to visit for the 4th of July in a few weeks :).

Just a few notes about these cookies – the recipe calls for shortening and I did use Crisco in this batch because I wanted to make them the same way my Grandma did, but you can also substitute the Crisco for butter and they should turn out the same.  In fact, I think the next time I make them I will use butter just because I think it will add just a little bit more of that golden buttery flavor.

For the nuts I used pecans – my husband actually had brought home some fresh pecans (like we had to crack them out of their shells) from someone at work and I mixed those in with the store bought chopped pecans I already had.  One thing I did notice is that the nuts did get chopped up pretty fine once they were in the batter, so if you are a big nut lover, you can leave them as fairly big pieces and they will probably get chopped up a littler smaller when they get mixed in with the dough.

Also, I didn’t wrap the dough in wax paper and slice it.  Partly because I was out of wax paper, but mostly because I was lazy.  Instead I just scooped out all the cookies with my cookie scooper and put them on a plate and chilled them for a few hours.  Then when I put them on the baking sheet to cook, I just flattened them down a tiny bit with the back of a spoon so they wouldn’t puff up too much and they turned out perfect.

Feel free to do the wax paper way – but just know that if you’d rather just scoop them into balls and press them down, they will turn out just fine.  The recipe makes about 2 1/2 dozen cookies.

Another thing to note is that this dough is also very freezer friendly – since its just my husband and I right now I usually like to freeze half the dough after I make it and save it for the next time we want to make cookies…if I can stop myself from eating all the dough before then.  For me, a truly tremendous cookie means that it is irresistible in both its dough and cooked form and this cookie definitely passes that test.  My husband has been begging me to make them again, but I keep telling him we have to make it through the rest of the recipes!

Lastly, the recipe says to cook them for ten minutes, which for me was the perfect amount, but I would make sure not to leave them in any longer than ten minutes.  Once they are cooled they are chewy on the inside and crispy on the outside and cooking them any longer I think would ruin the chewiness in the middle.  If you like a more doughy cookie you could even take them out a bit early and when they cool you’ll have a nice chewy oatmeal cookie.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy making these oatmeal crispies!  For the past few years I’ve kind of been on a baking hiatus to try to be more healthy, so when I started back up I made all these rules about how often I was going to bake and how many treats I was going to allow myself to eat…let’s just say this recipe made me realize I have a long way to go with my self-discipline skills…

If you want to follow along as we make our way through the rest of my grandma’s recipes, be sure to follow daisyfarmkitchen on Instagram!  Thanks for stopping by!

xo, Hannah