No Bake Cookies

I have been making these cookies ever since I was old enough for my mom to get me to stand on a chair and hold onto a wooden spoon. Whenever cool weather shows up, these cookies come out!

Best No-Bake Cookies Ever

1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup milk (I use non-fat all the time just fine)
1/2 cup cocoa (regular, not dutch cocoa)
2 cups sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
3 cups rolled oats
1/2 cup coconut (or peanuts or rolled oats if you prefer)

Measure out oats and coconut and set aside.
Set out a large piece of wax or parchment paper.

Combine the first 4 ingredients in a heavy bottomed pan. I used my new enamel casserole and it worked marvelously.

Bring to soft boil stage. 234-240 F. Now if you don't have a candy thermometer--and I realized mine was not working about half way through cooking---you can drop a small spoonful of the bubbling chocolate into a glass of cold water to see when it is at soft ball stage.

Once to soft ball stage you have to work fast. Take pan off heat, stir in vanilla and then stir in your dry ingredients. This is the only tricky part of the whole recipe. If you wait too long, the mixture will crumble and not form cookies. But you can always use it as a topping for something else!

Spoon out lovely chocolate blobs on parchment paper and allow to cool. I usually singe my tongue because I insist on eating one before it is cooled.

At the end of our End of Summer party last Saturday there were none of the no-bake cookies left. My brownies with chipotle on the other side, were not as big a hit, (it is hard to be casual about spicy dessert) but that was just fine because we ate them for breakfast the next day!

These will last a week in a closed container, but mine never last that long.