In my effort to eat more healthy grains and fiber, I bought a huge bag of rolled oats from Healthy Options. This was supposed to be my breakfast everyday at work. This phase, however, was doomed to be short-lived. Soon, I got tired of the taste and texture of oatmeal, no matter how hard I try to change it up.
It was only recently that I remembered that I still had a bag of oatmeal remaining ^^;
I still didn’t want to eat it for breakfast, that’s for sure. I don’t bake and I don’t have an oven so I can’t make oatmeal cookies.
Then the minion in me had a light bulb moment. Maybe there are cookie recipes that do not require baking. A quick Google search yielded so many results and one of the best rated ones is from Southyourmouth.com
Ingredients:
Sugar – 2 cups
Uncooked oatmeal (preferably quick cooking) – 3 cups
Unsalted butter – 1 stick
Milk – 1/2 cup
Peanut butter – 1 cup
Vanilla – 1 teaspoon
Pinch of salt
Let’s cook!
1. In a saucepan, combine sugar, salt, butter and milk. Stir until free from lumps
2. Boil over medium heat for 1 full minute.
3. Remove from heat immediately.
4. Mix in peanut butter and vanilla. Stir well until smooth.
5. Thoroughly incorporate oatmeal. 6. On a plate lined with waxed paper, drop mixture by the teaspoonfuls.
7. Cool until set and firm.
Some tips and observations:
1. It is weird for me to be saying it but the cookies were a little too sweet for me. I don’t know it I can cut down the amount of sugar in my next batch because apparently, it is the glue that binds the mixture together. But this should go well with tea or brewed coffee.
2. I used creamy peanut butter but you can experiment with a crunchy brand. Just make sure you use an imported brand because local ones are too oily.
3. I used brown sugar so my cookies turned dark. But you can also use white.
4. After stirring in the peanut butter, I also added about half a cup of chocolate chips. Rookie cookie mistake. The residual heat melted the chocolate chips. Next time, I will add the chips after incorporating the oatmeal to ensure that the mixture has cooled down a bit.
5. In the next batch, I will add rice crispies too 🙂 What else would work? Cornflakes? Mini marshmallows? Hmm…
6. Three cups of oatmeal = a lot of cookies. If you are not making cookies for a lot of people, cut the recipe in half (or smaller).
7. I also found it easier to let the mixture rest for a bit before dropping it into the waxed paper. It is easier to shape because it is no longer very liquid.
8. I stored much of the mixture in a lunchbox lined with waxed paper. I can slice it later.
Not very pretty-looking but I love my no-bake cookies!