No-Bake Cookies!

NO-BAKE COOKIES!!

I LOVE chocolate! And I LOVE desserts! I like cookies, cake (sometimes), brownies, but I really LOVE ice cream! I can easily pass up cookies, cake, or brownies for a bowl of ice cream...

....unless that cookie happens to be the no-bake cookies pictured above. These are my all-time, most favorite cookie in the whole world! They're like a drug to me! I find it hard to stop at just 1...or 2....or even 5! Yeah, they're that amazing! 

For the last 3 days, Michel and I took a mini-vacation to Broken Bow Lake in Oklahoma. We rented a cabin so that we could make our own food, and just enjoy some time away without breaking the bank. We took hamburgers and hot dogs for our meals, and I knew that we needed something sweet to eat, so I whipped up a batch of these decadent cookies the day before we left. 

Sadly, they're all gone. But I know I'll whip them up again - usually around Christmas. I love them so much that I can't keep them around very much or I would devour them every couple days. But I wanted to share the recipe. Many people make these, and have their own variations of the recipe, but this is my all-time favorite (what's sad is I have this recipe MEMORIZED!!):

In a medium-sized sauce pan on the stove, put in: 

2 c. sugar

4 T. cocoa powder

1-1/8 stick butter/margarine

1/2 c. milk

In a large mixing bowl, have ready to go: 

3 c. quick oats

2/3 c. peanut butter (you can do this as all crunchy or creamy, but I like doing 1/3 crunchy and 1/3 creamy)

Pinch of salt

1 tsp. vanilla extract

Turn heat on under saucepan to medium/medium-high, stirring constantly! Bring ingredients to a FULL, ROLLING BOIL!

Pour ingredients from saucepan into mixing bowl and mix everything together. Drop by spoonful onto wax paper, or aluminum foil. Let cookies stand for approx. 1-2 hours to harden before transferring them to refrigerator. Let cookies refrigerate approximately 2 hours, or overnight before eating for best results! 

Take little bites to fully enjoy the deliciousness of these oh-so-amazing cookies!