Okay, you don’t care, you just want some cookies. Or you have a kid, and he magically goes to a school that still lets you bring in unpackaged homemade baked goods, but you forgot, and he needs them in the morning, and your oven is broken.
Or, if you’re me, you’re just bad at making cookies in general. Either you use waxed paper when you shouldn’t, and they sail off in all directions, or they’re not cold enough and get melted weirdly, or, you know, all unhappy cookies are unhappy in their own way.
BUT NOT THESE. Not these. We call them “John’s Cookies,” but no one seems to remember who John is. A guy who likes great cookies and doesn’t have a lot of free time, I guess.
John’s Cookies:
2 and 1/4 cups crushed graham cracker crumbs (POUND ‘EM IN A ZIPLOC BAG WITH A ROLLING PIN)
1 can sweetened condensed milk
3/4 cup chocolate chips (the mini ones work best)
Combine, roll them into small balls (or slightly bigger ones! it literally does not matter) and then roll them in either coconut, cocoa, or icing sugar. Or sprinkles, who cares? Only you!
Refrigerate. Eat.
TELL US OF YOUR NO-BAKE SECRETS.
Not no-bake, but three-ingredient-brownies are my got-to thing.
You need a jar of nutella around 250-300g (or similar chocolate+milk+other stuff spread), 10 tablespoons of flour and two eggs.
Mash all that together, put in cupcake tray/ regular baking tray and cook at 180 celsius for about 20 minutes. Cool a little, and serve. BAM.
You can add chocolate chips, sugared fruits, caramelised and toasted nuts to the ix according to your own taste. I’ve had good results with toasted hazelnuts and dark chocolate chips.
I will take absolutely no credit for this, because it is not mine at all. But I’ve made these: http://thehairpin.com/2012/07/make-friends-and-in…
And they have come out really great, and even pleased usually-not-chocolate-cookie-eaters. They are really intense though – idk if that’s the right word, but there’s something very rich about them.
I will also add that humidity matters! I made them once and they came out normal and another time they were reeeeeally thin and flat? And I know it was because of the weather but I forget why. Still tasted the same aka delicious.
YESSSS. Made these bunches of times, always winners no matter the shape/density.
All unhappy cookies are unhappy in their own way!
Stop And Go Cookies
– Green and red glacee cherries.
– Butter
– Dried shredded coconut
– Confectioner’s sugar
Make butter icing with dried coconut in it (mix butter with icing sugar until stiff, add dried shredded coconut until solidish.).
Roll butter icing around cherries until invisible.
Crumple graham crackers to dust, roll icing-balls in dust.
Pack into box, refrigerate.
Take to Family Get-Together.
A green cherry means you can have another, a red one means stop. Skew blend of cherries according to family preference, fondness for children as triangulated to their parents, access to escape vehicle.
DESTROY CHRISTMAS.
How deliciously evil!
omg I need to make these asap.
NICOLE WHO OWNS A ROLLING PIN
Top household tip: put the graham crackers in a plastic supermarket bag, tie the handles together, take it outside and grind them under your shoe. It absolutely doesn’t work, but it feels good.
Wait, why would you grind them under your shoe? Do it with your hands! It may take a little longer, but crushing things with your hands is fun! That’s what I do when I make potato chip chicken.
POTATO CHIP CHICKEN TELL ME MORE
OH NO, I CAN’T FIND MY RECIPE! Fortunately, there appear to be many recipes for potato chip chicken on the internet and they’re probably all good. The crushed potato chips are the breading, obviously.
oh my god all I want to do now is read recipe tips that don’t work but do feel good
I have a two-ingredient pulled pork recipe that mostly involves walking around all day while it cooks and saying “HEY, WHAT SMELLS LIKE PORK BUTT.” Look for it in your submissions pile someday soon.
You guys. Usually I don’t comment, though I might start. But I want to share legit and awesome information with you: save the liner bags from cereal boxes, they are great for crumb crushing. Also, wine bottles are awesome rolling pins. And they are full of wine.
I do, and have also never successfully made cookies, even though I keep trying because I have a moomin cookie cutter. I can make cakes like nobody’s business, but cookies are beyond me. I can probably manage no-bake ones though!
MOOMINS! what about marzipan moomins?
That’s a thought! I could do cut-out royal icing or marzipan or something and put him on top of round cakes.
I am tempted with peppermint cream moomins but he’s huge! Mostly I take him to baking parties and pimp him out to my friends who can make cookies, the other week we did gingerbread moomins and daleks.
I own one but I always lose it because I’ve moved a lot and the only way it fits in a W.B. Mason box is diagonally which makes it difficult to fit anything else in the box so it ends up in some random place apart from my kitchen stuff.
That or I gave it to my ex boyfriend when I moved out because it had a nonstick coating and he ruins everything nice.
Pretty sure that was a typo; she must have meant “wine bottle”.
I legit use an empty wine bottle as a rolling pin, it works extremely well and you can stand it up between uses – and of course there is an infinite supply.
A few weeks ago I made graham crackers and instead of a rolling pin, which we do not own, I used an empty wine bottle. Worked a treat.
I am so glad to see that I am not the only one who uses parchment paper and a wine bottle as one. I always have one of those around and have never owned a rolling pin.
Smashsmashsmash it with the base of a wine bottle. I BET YOU OWN A WINE BOTTLE.
Or a big can of tomatoes, or a heavy vase, or whatever. BUT A WINE BOTTLE, RIGHT?
DO YOU OWN A BOTTLE WINE???
*cough* Pringles can *cough*
Thread-jacking for gluten-free Toasties:
PILLSBURY NOW MAKES GF READY-MADE COOKIE DOUGH. (And also pie and pizza crust. But whatever. COOKIE DOUGH.)
GLORY BE. ALL PRAISE TO THE DOUGH-BOY. MAY HIS GIGGLES ECHO UNTO THE ENDING OF THE WORLD.
omg there’s pie crust
I KNOW. The thought that my pumpkin pie might have a crust this year is kind of amazing. (I cook my daughter’s meals from scratch; I draw the line at baking from scratch.)
Yeah, I was thumbing through a GF baking book a couple of weeks ago. There were tutorials on making 5 individual types of flour-mixes before you even get to any actual recipes. So that went straight on to the eff-that-noise pile.
Yep, the “poop cookies” bgprincipessa mentioned above are my go-to when I want sweets but am too lazy to roll and bake cookies (it’s quite satisfying to blop the mixture down on wax paper).
Slightly more effort, although still not much effort at all: the three-ingredient peanut butter cookies most people also seem to know about:
1 cup peanut butter
1 cup sugar
1 cup egg
Mix, form dough balls, roll in more sugar and place on baking sheet. Bake at 350 F untitl they look done-ish – don’t overbake! Criss-cross with fork.
It’s also easy to halve the recipe, add chocolate chips, or otherwise improvise.
Oh! And I make these every holiday season:
Spread peanut butter between two Ritz crackers. Dip the sandwich in melted white chocolate or almond bark. Place two M&Ms on top before the chocolate hardens (red and green candies with the white chocolate look quite nice for the holidays). It’s an orgasmic combination of flavors, I give them as gifts and people always love them.
And if you’re extra lazy (like me), you can buy those little lunchbox packs of premade Ritz+peanut butter sandwiches. Then all you have to do is melt the white chocolate and dip.
True! I kind of relish spreading the peanut butter though, because I feel like it adds an extra ring of truth to “I made these!”
(/ I can make extra-peanut-buttery ones a la Double Stuf Oreos.)
The only no-bake recipe I know is for BRANDY BALLS. Or bourbon balls, or whiskey balls, or rum balls. Whatever. We use brandy and it’s the only time we buy it for Christmas.
In your food processor (or mortar and pestle, or whatever) grind up a box of vanilla wafers. Also grind up some walnuts or almonds. Mix these with (something like) a cup of confectioners sugar, one-third cup of corn syrup, and one-third cup of cocoa. Add brandy till it comes together. It will be hellaciously sticky. Roll into balls, roll the balls in powdered sugar, regular sugar, coarse sanding sugar, or more cocoa. Or sprinkles, I suppose.
Fair warning, those proportions may be really inaccurate as we always use a tattered clipping and that is in the recipe box at my parents’ house.
These are also really good if you mash up those thin chocolate cookies!
! I can not BELIEVE I never thought of using those in my bourbon balls (because they should be made with bourbon and not brandy, as everyone knows).
Chow mein noodle haystacks. If you don’t have chow mein noodles, use pretzels. Totally a great no bake recipe. You melt some chocolate, throw some stuff in the melted chocolate, and let it set in the fridge or freezer.
My family makes them with butterscotch chips, so they actually look like haystacks!
There is no wrong way to make one.
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/3 cup honey
1/3 cup coconut
1 cup malted milk powder (I use chocolate flavored)
Mix, roll into balls, eat.
Yum…I remember making those in grade school with powdered milk…they were like magical, salmonella-risk-free cookie dough.
This is my grandma’s no-bake cookie recipe, but it is a little bit more complicated since it involves stovetop work.
2 c sugar
1 stick butter (1/2 cup)
4 tbsp cocoa
1/2 c milk
1 c peanut butter
1 tbsp vanilla
3 c oatmeal
Stir together the first four ingredients ina saucepan and bring it to a boil. Carefully! Don’t overboil, and keep it moving so it doesn’t scorch. Boil 1 minute. Then remove from the heat, stir in everything else, and drop by large spoonfuls onto waxed paper and let cool. DELICIOUS, but look like turds.
Diana’s No-Bake Cookies:
1) Go to the Safeway next door.
2) Purchase a box of Anna’s Ginger Thins.
3) Put on a little water for tea.
Consume while watching a period movie set in the British countryside.
Dang it…now I really want a seven-layer bar! Add butterscotch chips to John’s Cookies and you’d have my heaven.
Mallory,if you don’t have a rolling pin(useful device for mashing things, pie crust, burglars’ heads, whatever) you can use a wine bottle. Or a mallet. Or roll over them in your car. Whatever works.
1) Condensed milk is *magic* and yet I have none. What is wrong with me?
2) How many cups of crumbs do you get from 1 package of graham crackers? If the answer is 2.25, I’m so happy.
I don’t have a no-bake recipe, but I discovered the laziest way to bake regular cookies.
1. make a half-batch (so my recipe is basically 1 stick butter, 1 cup sugar (half brown half white), some vanilla extract, 1 egg, 1 cup oatmeal, 1.5-2 cups flour, .5 tsps each baking soda and baking powder, and chocolate chips, cranberries, or whatever else you want to add)
2. use a stand mixer (this makes is super duper easy, but it’d be pretty easy if you just stirred it all up by hand, which I had done for years before I got married)
3. refrigerate the cookie dough after it is mixed and you ate your fill
4. bake the cookies tomorrow!
that way you get fresh baked cookies, it’s just about one baking tray’s worth, and you don’t have to do that much work on either day. I make cookies all the time now.
Not cookies, but icebox cake is as no-bake as it gets AND works with other cookies than chocolate wafers — gingersnaps, any flavor of Anna’s Thins, Biscoffs if you can find them. Your dinner guests will MARVEL.
Oh, boy, my mother and the grandkids made icebox cake with the Famous Chocolate Wafers a few summers ago. I expected it to be all weirdly sweet and chemical-y, but it was great. What a delicious surprise.
Rice Krispie Treats are no-bake, but it doesn’t seem like they count, here. Anyway, whenever I make them now, I use browned butter instead of regular butter (a la Smitten Kitchen) and add some flakey sea salt because I’m that kind of fancy asshole.
I have a two-ingredient pulled pork recipe that mostly involves walking around all day while it cooks and saying "HEY, WHAT SMELLS LIKE PORK BUTT." Look for it in your submissions pile someday soon.
Oh, boy, my mother and the grandkids made icebox cake with the Famous Chocolate Wafers a few summers ago. I expected it to be all weirdly sweet and chemical-y, but it was great. What a delicious surprise.
My mom used to make something similar with the addition of either peanut butter chips or peanut butter cups and in bar form. You lay graham crackers down along the bottom of a buttered glass pan, mix your chocolate chips, peanut butter chips or peanut butter cup pieces, and sweetened condensed milk all together spread it over your graham crackers and bake until your chips get all melty. She got it from a magazine when she and my dad first got married and forgot the name so we always just called them “thingies.”
It’s not a cookie, but no-bake icebox pie is magical and happy and the best thing when it’s a million degrees. My birthday’s at the end of August and I grew up in Tucson, so these were always my birthday cakes. This year (though I am not in Tucson), I made limeade icebox pie. Mix a big container of Cool Whip with a can of sweetened condensed milk, then fold in a can of frozen limeade and all the lime zest you can scrounge up. Pour into a graham cracker crust (or two, if you get the regular size) and stick into the freezer for as long as you can wait. Eat all of it all the time forever.
It's not a cookie, but no-bake icebox pie is magical and happy and the best thing when it's a million degrees. My birthday's at the end of August and I grew up in Tucson, so these were always my birthday cakes. This year (though I am not in Tucson), I made limeade icebox pie. Mix a big container of Cool Whip with a can of sweetened condensed milk, then fold in a can of frozen limeade and all the lime zest you can scrounge up. Pour into a graham cracker crust (or two, if you get the regular size) and stick into the freezer for as long as you can wait. Eat all of it all the time forever.