Cooking for Quarantine: Instant Oatmeal Cookies
Here is another excerpt from Mama, Mama, Only Mama: An Irreverent Guide for the Newly Single Parent—From Divorce and Dating to Cooking and Crafting, All While Raising the Kids and Maintaining Your Own Sanity (Sort Of).
Cookie emergencies are real. I'm here for you.
Instant Oatmeal Cookies
If you have recently entered the family blender you deserve a treat. However, if you put off buying groceries and have nothing in your cabinets that resembles a treat, it is helpful to know how to make cookies out of random things when you are stressed out and are having a cookie emergency and have no freaking ingredients for cookies in the house, which happens to me quite often.
The end result is more cookie-esque than cookie, but it is tasty and requires a minimum of supplies.
Ingredients:
2 packets instant oatmeal any flavor. I used maple because I buy a box of assorted flavors of oatmeal and I don’t like maple-flavored oatmeal, so I always have plenty left over. It’s gross for breakfast but it makes a fine cookie.
1/4 cup sugar (I suspect that if you use plain oatmeal you may need more sugar)
5 teaspoons melted butter
Procedure:
- Cover cookie sheet in tin foil. Do not use nonstick spray or anything fancy like that.
- Mix sugar and oatmeal together. Note: you can also add nuts and raisins. Probably chocolate chips if you have them, but I didn’t. I did have something leftover from a salad that looked like nuts and were called “pepitas” so I threw them in because I like nuts and seeds, even ones I have never heard of.
- Add butter slowly, in case you have too much or too little butter, depending on how much overflowed in the microwave when you were melting it. You don’t want soup.
- Spoon onto pan. It won’t look anything cookie-like. It’s kind of like you pour the stuff on the cookie sheet, then you form it into lumps that are vaguely cookie-shaped. I made 6 cookies, but you could probably make more or fewer depending on the size of cookie you like and the size of the pan you have.
- Bake 10-ish minutes on 350. The bigger the cookie, the longer the bake time. As always, turn on the oven light and look through the window. Sadly, my oven light was out, so I had to open and peek. This is actually not that bad, because it releases clouds of cookie fragrance.
- Let cool until firm, and kind of smush them together a little as they cool. Of course, if you really need a cookie this minute and can’t wait for them to firm up, just eat them with a fork.
