Elaine's Cookies

If I recall correctly, the "Elaine" is Elaine Donotov, who lived down the street from us when I was just a wee child. She probably doesn't remember me, and might not even remember my mom... but these are the best cookies in the whole world.

This recipe makes a ton of really really dangerous cookies.

P.S. Apologies for the American measurement units. It's how I got the recipe...

Melt together:

• 1 pound butter or margarine
• 1 pound brown sugar (which I have listed as about 2 1/3 cups brown sugar, but that doesn't "feel" right to me)

Let the butter-stuff cool for a bit. While it is cooling, beat together

• 3 eggs
• 2 tablespoons vanilla

Get the dry-stuff measured out into a very big bowl and mix it all up.

• 6 cups rolled oats
• 1 cup wheat germ
• 1.5 cups flour
• 1 cup milk powder
• 1.5 teaspoons baking soda

By the time you mix the egg-stuff and dry-stuff, the butter-stuff should have cooled down at least a little.

Mix the egg-stuff with the butter-stuff. NOTE! If you put the egg-stuff in too-hot butter-stuff, the eggs will curdle. (I found on the web that eggs curdle at about 180 degrees Fahrenheit.) You need to either let the butter-stuff cool way down or mix the butter-stuff slowly into the egg-stuff. Take a very small quantity of butter-stuff and drizzle it into the egg-stuff, stirring madly. Repeat, repeat, repeat, until the egg-stuff is very diluted with the butter-stuff. At some point when you get bored, you can decide it's diluted enough, and dump this mixture into the butter-stuff and mix it in.

Dump all the egg-butter-stuff into the dry-stuff. Toss the egg-butter-stuff pot into the sink, you're done with it.

Wash your hands, they are about to get dirty.

Go mix the egg-butter-stuff with the dry-stuff. It will feel like it's more liquid and sticky than it ought to be. Don't panic. Mix it all up as best you can, a little more, and then go wash your hands again. Get all the egg-butter-stuff off of your hands.

Now, magically, when you stick your hands in the batter again, the batter won't stick to your hands nearly as badly. I'm not quite sure how this magic happens, but it does. Oh sure, you can make the batter stick to your hands if you aren't careful, but it's not nearly as bad as you feared about five minutes ago.

At this point, you could put walnut-sized drops of dough on a cookie sheet and bake them. However, this recipe makes a lot of cookies, and if you eat all those yourself today, you will need to buy new trousers. And if you bake them all, you will eat a good fraction of them. So instead, wash your hands again and tear out about ten pieces of wax paper about 20-30 cm wide.

Roll "logs" of cookie dough between your hands. I like to make the logs about 2-3 cm in diameter, and slightly shorter than the wax paper. You might need to make two half-logs and join them together. That's okay, they will live.

When they are all snug in the wax paper, toss them in the freezer and take out as needed.

Cut the logs into slices about .5 cm thick, pop them onto cookie sheets, and cook them at some temperature until they are done.

I hear you complaining that that isn't very precise. It isn't, sorry. I don't have written down what to use, and the oven that we just cooked them in is kind of flakey... so I'm not sure. Just try something and pay close attention the first time. I think I cooked these at something around 325 degrees Fahrenheit for around twenty minutes, but I'm not completely sure about that.

-- DuckySherwood - 05 Oct 2005