Grandma Maye’s Cowboy Cookies

Across the street from my elementary school when I was a little girl there lived a lady named Mrs. Hall, who baked cookies for the neighborhood kids. Her yard was a shortcut. At least 10 kids tromped past her house on their way home from school each day, including three girls in my class.

Mrs. Hall didn’t bake every day, of course, but she was legendary in my school. She offered her tray of cookies from her back stoop. Those of us who didn’t live in the neighborhood could not see her, and never knew when cookies were offered until the next day, when the neighborhood kids chattered happily about yesterday’s treat. Those of us who stared at the front of her house from the schoolyard, drooling, were envious of the neighborhood kids. They not only got home in time to watch “Dark Shadows,” on TV, they got free cookies. Every kid who tasted Mrs. Hall’s cookies deemed them the world’s best.

The summer before I started high school, my father left my mother and married Mrs. Hall’s daughter. Stuff like that happens in small towns. Thus, Mrs. Hall became a sort of grandmother to me. Being a busy teenager as well as a sullen one, I missed out on many batches of Mrs. Hall’s “cowboy” cookies. I never felt the joy of stopping off at my step-grandmother’s home on my way home from school, because the high school was nowhere near my elementary school or her house. I don’t remember when I first tasted those cookies, but they were, indeed, delicious: Crunchy on the edges, chewy inside. Buttery and sweet with chunks of chocolate and pecans. My brother was crazy for them and begged for them all the time. A novice baker (I won a county 4-H award for my cornbread when I was 10), I wanted to learn how to make cookies that great. But Grandma Maye Hall never shared any recipes. I wasn’t all that communicative as a teenager. Maybe I never asked.

Years later, after I had graduated from college and Grandma Maye was starting to forget everything she knew about cooking — which was a good amount; she cooked often and well — her daughter, my step-mother, convinced her to write a book of her recipes. This book was presented to me one Christmas, to my delight. Now I would find out the secret to Grandma Maye’s cookies!

The recipe in her book included a list of ingredients and these instructions: Mix together and bake at 325 until done. Well, I’ve baked enough cookies to know that is not quite how she did it. As I read the list of ingredients, I also realized that she’d left out a few things, such as vanilla and salt.

So I started experimenting, using her proportions. I studied recipes for chocolate chip cookies and oatmeal raisin cookies, trying to figure out the proper steps to mixing the ingredients. It took a few tries, but Grandma Maye had the proportions and the baking temperature just right.

I always thought she called them “cowboy cookies” because they were made for her “cowboys,” my brother, two step-brothers, and the neighborhood kids. I learned many years later, long after I had perfected my recipe for the World’s Best Cookies, that indeed there is such a thing as Cowboy Cookies, and there are 7.6 million results in a Google search for them! Most of the recipes are similar to mine, using butter, white and brown sugar, flour, oatmeal, chopped nuts and shredded coconut. (There are a few misguided Cowboy Cookie bakers out there who do not use coconut. Their loss.)

I use this recipe as a base for a variety of cookies, always with the same response Grandma Maye got from the kids in my elementary school: These cookies are perfection.

The World’s Best Cookies (Cowboy Cookies)

1 scant cup granulated sugar

1 cup brown sugar, lightly packed

2 sticks butter, softened

2 eggs

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour

½ cup stone ground whole wheat flour

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. baking soda

½ tsp. sea salt

2 cups quick cooking oatmeal

½ to ¾ cup sweetened coconut (optional)

1 cup chopped nuts (optional)

1 12-oz pkg chocolate chips (I use Ghirardelli)

Cream together softened butter and both sugars using mixer until smooth.

Add eggs and vanilla, blend thoroughly with mixer.

Sift together both flours, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Add the flour mixture slowly to the butter-egg mixture.

Stir in oatmeal and coconut with spoon.

Add chocolate chips and nuts.

(If the dough is soft at this point, refrigerate it for a half-hour or so. You want cool, firm dough to form round cookies.)

Roll dough into golf-ball sized spheres and place on cookie sheets lined with parchment paper or a silicone mat. Leave unused dough in fridge and cook in batches.

Bake at 325 degrees for 15–16 minutes. Makes about 70 cookies, but you can make bigger cookies and have only 48. If you really want to make this pop, use dark chocolate chips and sprinkle just a few grains of coarse salt on each cookie.

VARIATIONS

Oatmeal Raisin: This recipe also makes the perfect oatmeal raisin cookie. Leave out the chocolate chips and increase the raisins to 1 ½ cups. Try a mix of golden and dark raisins. Walnuts are particularly good in this cookie.

Cranberry-Almond: White chocolate chips and chopped slivered almonds, substitute almond extract for the vanilla and add a half-cup of dried cranberries.

Peanut Butter Chip: Mix half peanut butter chips and half chocolate chips and use peanuts for your nuts and you get something that tastes like a Reese’s Cup.

Almond Joy: Substitute coconut extract for the vanilla. Use dark chocolate chips and chopped almonds and at least ¾ cup sweetened coconut.

Other ideas: You can add chopped pretzels for a salty, chunky bite. Add toffee chunks and dark chocolate chips to create a salted caramel cookie (don’t forget the sprinkle of salt on the top of that one!).