Cookie Confessional

Last week it was my turn to provide "Sweet Rewards" for Relief Society. Our presidency hatched this idea to encourage the sisters to report their community service hours, as requested by our stake leaders. So off I skipped to church on Sunday with a basket full of goodies.

Each beribboned cello bag held six cookies. They looked good. (Presentation is everything!) I had made up a few bags of toffee meringues for my gluten-free friends but the bulk of the basket was chocolate chip. That's the cookie my first counselor had brought the previous week so I repeated it for continuity.

Chocolate chip is not my fave.

I just don't find much to be charmed by the average recipe, unless it's been doctored up quite a bit. Nuts or oatmeal at the very least. The more the better. A few months ago I stumbled across an amazing chocolate chip pecan coconut version at Flour Girls and Dough Boys. Yummy. Unfortunately, that bakery is in American Fork, Utah and I am not.

My college roommate Erika was a master (doctor?!) of messing with the cookie -- she never used a recipe, just tossed in whatever sounded good. And they were good. Now Erika has joined the ranks of my gluten-free friends, but she's passed the cookie making torch to her daughter. Unfortunately for me, they're both in Utah with all those yummy bakeries. Fair? I think not.

So last Saturday I set out to make a mess of cookies. Maybe it was because I knew I'd also be making toffee meringues from scratch, or perhaps is was my innate lack of enthusiasm for chocolate chip cookies, but the first thing I pulled out was a tub-o-dough from Costco. It was a first.

I dumped the contents into the kitchenaid, added pecans, coconut and oatmeal (and some Penzey's vanilla for good measure) and mixed until it looked good. Then I used an ice-cream-style scoop to place perfectly portioned rounds onto parchment-lined cookie sheets and into the oven they went. By the way, the scoop is the key to achieving uniform cookies. People notice. (Presentation is everything!)

So this morning when Sister Clark (Aloha!) called to ask for the "recipe" I laughed. And then I shared it with her. Here's the printable version:

Cliff's Gourmet Cookies
1 tub of dough from Costco
chopped pecans, to taste
coconut, to taste
oatmeal, mashed between clean hands, to taste
Penzey's vanilla, to taste

Mix. Drop by rounded scoop onto parchment lined sheets. Bake. Cool. Enjoy.