Icon Coffee-dunking Oatmeal Cookies

These aren’t your grandmother’s oatmeal cookies.

When I bake cookies I usually try to use something that I’m just about out of, so I can get rid of the container. Tonight I noticed that I have what appears to be three cups of oatmeal left in the oatmeal cylinder, so, why not try some oatmeal cookies – I thought.

It’s 15 degrees out; I’m hungry and need something to dunk into milk or coffee. Not one to follow the recipe, I’ve used poetic license, thus inventing Icon Coffee-dunking Oatmeal Cookies.

Here goes.

3 cups oatmeal
1/3 cup canola oil**
1/3 cup apple sauce**
(No white sugar – most recipes call for nearly 1 cup)
1 cup lightly packed brown sugar
2 eggs (or 4 egg whites)
1 ½ cup flour
½ t salt
½ t vanilla (I use real vanilla.) If you use flavoring go for 1 teaspoon, I suppose.
1 handful of wheat germ, just for fun
1 t baking soda

**Instead of using 1 cup of oil, I asked my wife for a substitute. This was her suggestion and it worked perfectly.

Mix wet ingredients together; mix dry ingredients together. Then pour both into one large bowl and mix with a large spoon. Just for kicks if you are right handed mix with your left hand. This gets your brain working in ways that may surprise you.

Then, open the ‘frig and check out any nuts in sight. I couldn’t find walnuts (recommended in most recipes and I really don’t like raisins, so I grabbed a bag of slivered almonds.)

Put in whatever amount pleases you.

Grease the cookie sheets and have your oven warming to 350 degrees.

Now comes the sticky part: wad up the dough in something between the size of a golf ball and an egg. Place these on the sheet about 2 inches apart. Then flatten each with a fork.

Once the oven’s hot, bake for 12 minutes. During the baking, wash the dishes to kill time and clean up the kitchen. If you use a timer, the dinger should strike while you are putting away the last dish.

Place the cookies on a rack to cool, and whip off a quick e-mail to a relative, telling them how much you appreciate them.

By this time the first batch of cookies should be ready to eat. In all, this recipe created 22 cookies.