My Favorite Cookie

What's your favorite cookie? Peanut butter? Oatmeal? Chocolate Chip? Butterscotch? Maybe you share my perspective on cookies. They're all good. Enter the Monster Cookie! It's a little bit of everything all rolled into one. Alanis Morissette, anyone? In a sentence sweet...

Anyway, I just love these cookies. I've eaten them since I was a little girl and they still top my list. Peanut butter, oatmeal, chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, and to top it off...M&M's!



I rarely feature baked goods on this blog. Not because I don't love to bake...I do. I really do. Pies and cakes and cookies and brownies and muffins and bread and ...You see, I get so distracted when I think about sweets. But the fact is, I'm a consumer. That is, I consume large quantities of baked goods if I keep them around my house. I'm curvy by nature. And I love food. So, I exercise. Every. Single. Day. And I eat a balanced diet. But curvy trends toward pleasantly plump when I get on one of my baking jags. When I worked outside of the home, I could take my goodies to work and pawn them off on my co-workers. Now, no such luck. Lately I have resolved to bake only when there is an occasion. Like Memorial Day. It's a holiday for Heaven's sake. If that doesn't warrant baking, what does!? So I enlisted my daughter to help me whip up my favorite cookies. I thought they'd be a perfect snack for the road trip to our holiday destination and a hit at the pitch-in cook out we'll be attending when we arrive. I have to add that she was SO disappointed when she found that the cookies didn't actually look like monsters. I tried to explain, "Monster. Like giant. Huge. Larger than life. Like monter trucks..." My reasoning was lost on a 4 year old.

To make monster cookies I start by creaming a pound of butter with 2 pounds of brown sugar and 4 cups of white sugar. Oh yeah, and there's one whole tablespoon of corn syrup in there too. Is that weird to anyone else? Why do you think there's one tiny tablespoon of corn syrup in this massive amount of ingredients? No really, I'm serious. Does anyone know? Is that little tablespoon of corn syrup doing anything for the quality of my cookies? I mean, I know why I put it in...because that's the way we've always done it. But really, beyond that I'm not sure.



Next I break a dozen eggs into a bowl or large measuring cup. No shells allowed!



I beat the eggs a little and then had my trusty assistant add in 2 tablespoons of vanilla.



Mix the eggs into the butter and sugar. It'll look like this.



Then I measured out 18 cups of quick oats and combined them with 8 teaspoons of baking soda. Here is my big bowl of dry ingredients next to my big bowl of wet ingredients. Where on earth am I going to mix them together? Both my mom and grandma have giant bowls, like the size that I can wrap my arms around. Those giant bowls make combining and mixing these ingredients easy. I don't have one of those bowls. I could use a big roasting pan. Nope. I don't have one of those either. My wish list keeps growing... Luckily, I do have one more large bowl. I ended up dividing the "wet" ingredients in half and then adding half of the dry ingredients to each bowl, so that I had two large mixing bowls full of cookie dough in the end.



Oh wait, the peanut butter. We can't forget about the peanut butter. You need 3 lbs. I found this 4 lb. tub on sale at a local discount grocery last week. I wonder how many peanuts it takes to make 4 lbs. of peanut butter? Hmmm.



Mix the peanut butter into the "wet" ingredients.



Now we stir in the oatmeal mixture. The more you pour in, the harder it gets to stir.



Now for the chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, and M&M's.



At this point, we have to abandon our spoons and work the chips and candy into the dough with our clean hands.



Drop by 1/3 cupfulls onto an ungreased baking sheet. They bake for 13-15 minutes in a 350 degree oven. I like mine soft and chewy vs. crispy.



Cool.



Enjoy.



This recipe makes a ton of cookies. By a ton, I mean, I filled my cookie jar twice, took a plate to a friend's house, gave a few to the neighbors, I'll take to a tray to the Memorial Day cookout, and I still put 4 bags in my freezer. These freeze well. Perfect to pull out when company is coming or when you forgot to make something for the PTA bake sale. I have to store cookies in the garage freezer. That way I have to make a little extra effort if I'm tempted. I'm so bad that I actually try to justify eating these as a healthy breakfast. You know, because there's protein in the peanut butter and the oatmeal is a good source of dietary fiber.

I just put mine on a paper plate and then...



slide the plate into a labelled freezer bag.



Monster Cookies

1 lb. butter
2 lbs. brown sugar
4 cups granulated sugar
1 tablespoon corn syrup
1 dozen eggs, slightly beaten
2 tablespoons vanilla
3 lbs. creamy peanut butter
18 cups oatmeal
8 teaspoons baking soda
12 oz. pkg. of both butterscotch and chocolate chips
1 lb. M&M's candy

Cream butter and sugars. Add in eggs and vanilla. Mix well. Add in peanut butter. Mix well again. Combine dry ingredients. Dump the dry ingredients into the "wet" ingredients gradually. Stir until it becomes too difficult and then dump in the chips and candy and use your hands until all ingredients are combined. Drop by 1/3 cupfulls onto an ungreased cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees for 13-15 minutes or until golden brown on top.