A Recipe From The Cookie Lady

Tima, you are definitely going to get a great cookie recipe on my blog this week! Since that seems to be almost all I have done over the past week is make cookies, that is what I am blogging about.

I love to bake. That is not a surprise to any of you, I know. The thing is, I'm not so crazy about having to do all the clean up, but unfortunately, that just comes with the territory, so I don't complain about it too much. I have a pretty good routine that works for me as I usually do about seven of the large (12 by 17 inch) cookie sheets. I tear off strips of non stick Reynolds Wrap aluminum foil and line the sheets with it. (That way I don't have to grease the pans). We have a working table in our kitchen and I get Dick on one side of it and I on the other and we spoon the batter by tablespoons full onto the baking sheets, five one way and three the other so that we have fifteen cookies per sheet. I bake the cookies according to directions two sheets at a time. One sheet on the lower level rack the other on the rack above it, which I keep on the third level from the bottom. My oven has five levels that I can place my racks on. The baking time is so much less for the batch when you do two at a time. After all the cookies are baked and cooled on racks (I leave them in the cookie sheets until they are cooled) I stack them on my table and when they are totally cold, I put put them in the freezer in containers that have tight fitting lids or tops. (I use lots of plastic containers) Now for the cleanup. I take the foil liners and clean them off one at a time with a paper towel. If you put the foil close to the sink, the crumbs will fall into the sink and the little bit that sticks to the foil will come right off with a little bit of pressure as you guide the paper towel toward the sink. I then take a clean dish cloth and rinse it in water and get it as dry as I can, and wipe off the cookie sheets. (Very little comes off, really) . I then stack the cookie sheets on the counter top and place the cleaned foil sheets in a stack on top of the cookie sheets and voila! they are ready for a new baking day, which usually is the next morning. This really works for me and it avoids having to grease the pans and then having to clean the icky sticky cookie sheets.

So now, I have to tell you about the new recipe I tried today. With so many recipes, I put my own touch on them by adding things other than the recipe calls for. My family is not fond of raisins in the cookies, so I usually substitute. Most of them don't like nuts in them either, but Dick and I are very fond of nuts in just about everything. We eat nuts every day, actually. You can add raisins or anything else you might want in these cookies.

So here it is sports fans:

Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies

1 cup margarine
1 cup peanut butter (don't use an off brand. Creamy or nutty can by used)
1 cup granulated sugar
1 and 1/2 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
2 eggs
1 cups pecans chopped
1 cup milk chocolate chips
2 cups flour
2 cups oatmeal
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt

Cream margarine, peanut butter and sugars together until creamy, add eggs and beat again until light and fluffy. Then add the flour, oatmeal, baking powder, soda, salt until well blended. Then add pecans and milk chocolate chips. Stir until well blended and put in refrigerator for thirty minutes to chill. Drop chilled dough by tablespoons onto baking sheets. Bake @ 350 degrees 13 to 14 minutes or until golden.

I do hope that some of you will try this and if you do, please let me know how you liked them.

I might mention that the recipe called for putting all the dry ingredients into a bowl and to stir it well to mix before adding it to the creamed mixture. I actually measured my dry ingredients into my large flour sifter and sifted it into the batter. This way the soda and baking powder get mixed evenly. You can choose to do it either way or if you have your own way of adding dry ingredients, disregard the two suggestions.