Grandma Pat?s Chocolate Oatmeal Refrigerator Cookies

My mom would make these cookies for our family for dessert on special nights. We loved it when mom would tell stories about grandma Pat making them for her nine kids. There are a few favorite recipes in my mom’s family that are passed down. They’re usually simple and affordable recipes made popular by an ability to feed a lot of people on not a lot of money. An example being my mom’s potato salad, a dish so delicious it could sway a vote or sail a ship.

The process of stirring melting butter, sugar, and cocoa on the stove until boiling coupled with the aroma of the ingredients melding into one is satisfying. It reminds me of home and my family. I like to think about my grandma Pat hurriedly making these cookies while some of her kids clung to her pant legs, while others still in diapers pulled things out of cabinets. There was no such thing as an “easy” recipe for a mother with nine children.

I can remember my mom pulling a chair up to the stove and putting a wooden spoon in my little hand, guiding it around the pot carefully, making sure the sugar didn’t burn so I could learn how to make these cookies. I think that’s why they’re the best cookies ever.

I made this batch for a party and put a little shaved macadamia nut on top and dusted the platter with some cocoa powder to make these cookies look fancy.

Ingredients:

- 1 cup of sugar

- 2 Tbsp of cocoa powder

- 1/4 cup (half a stick) of butter

- 1/4 cup of milk

- 1 tsp of vanilla

- 2 cups of rolled oats

- (optional) 3-4 macadamia nuts, very finely cut for topping

- (optional) 1 Tbsp cocoa powder for dusting a platter

Instructions:

- Mix sugar, cocoa, butter, and milk in a sauce pan until boiling over medium

heat for 1 minute.

- Take off stove and fold in the oats and vanilla in a large bowl.

- Using a spoon, drop cookies on wax paper, or a parchment paper covered cookie sheet.

- If desired add shaved macadamia nuts and dust with cocoa powder

- Refrigerate for one to two hours, until hardened, if you can wait that long.

Makes about a baker’s dozen.

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