Coconut and Oats???

Coconut and oats...well I guess that could be okay...ummm well I just don't know...

I wonder how a publishing company chooses the very first recipe in a book???

I don't normally look at the very first one first, I flip to somewhere in the middle.  And I know, I know you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover but when it comes to cookbooks I do and pictures in a cookbook are a MUST.  I'm attracted to packaging.  Cute. Sparkly. Fun packaging.  It really doesn't matter what the product is, I'll look at it if it is packaged properly.  I know I'm a sucker. 

For Valentine's Day my hubby bought me The Golden Book of Cookies
 and yes it has sparkly golden pages, he knows what I like :-).  I don't think I've mentioned yet that I collect cookbooks.  Cookbooks of all kinds, not just sweet baking, though those are my favorite.  The others are a necessity, I can bake, not so much a real food cook.  My daddy used to tell Jayson, before we were married, he felt sorry for him because all he would ever eat was scrambled eggs and brownies because that was all I could cook.  That was a bit of an exaggeration I could make a cake, cookies and pies also, but the scrambled eggs was the extent of "food".  Today I can cook food, but I'm not much of an experimenter with real food.  I follow recipes exactly as written and yes I use recipes for pretty much everything I cook as meals.  Now making sweets, I am good at experimenting with that.  It doesn't always turn out but most of the time it is yummmmmy. 

Anywhoooo I stray. Back on topic.  Coconut and Oats???
I had to write to the owner of the copyright to be able to share recipes with you from this book.  Blah blah blah.  Recipes are meant to be enjoyed and shared, aren't they, well except for the family secret sugar cookies, and my pecan pie recipe you would have to tickle me for a long time to get those.  Those will be passed to my daughter.  So in the mean time while I'm waiting on my response from them I will not share the entire recipe with you from this book.  I guess if you want it you will have to buy the book. The Golden Book of Cookies: Over 330 Great Recipes. But I will share ones that I've come up with on my own.

Coconut Cookies with Rolled Oats.  I want to know if these are just amazing and that is why they choose them for the first recipe.  So preheat your oven to 300 degrees.

This recipe contains the normal flour, sugar, soda, salt, but there are not many wet ingredients, little water, and molasses with shortening and of course coconut and oats.  Old fashioned rolled oats, that is.  UGH you would know all I stock are the minute ones.  Who has time to cook oatmeal in the morning forever when you can pop the minute ones in the microwave and be done in 2 minutes.  When I'm trying to feed 3 kids and they all want something different the quick ones work great.  So that's that and I'm going to use the quick oats.

Let's get baking.

You will need a large mixing bowl, small mixing bowl, measuring cups, measuring spoons, a pastry cutter, and a 3 inch biscuit cutter works great to cut these out.

As usual this recipe calls for you to mix the dry ingredients in one bowl and the wet in the other.  In this case it was dry - large bowl and wet small.  This is a very easy recipe.  When all ingredients are mixed it will look like this.

The dough is a very thick heavy dough.  Once it is mixed, shape into a flat circle, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes. 

Once chilled roll out to 1/8 inch thick on lightly floured surface and cut into 3 inch circles, I used my handy dandy biscuit cutter.  Re-roll scraps, and cut the rest.  Place on buttered cookie sheet 1 inch apart bake at 300 degrees for 22 to 25 minutes.  I use parchment paper instead of butter, who wants to scrub a pan when you can just remove the paper?.  These cookies do not spread much in the oven.

All that is left is to cool them on a wire rack and then serve.

These turned out nice.  The recipe says it will make 20 to 25 cookies.  I only managed to get 18 out of the dough.  Maybe that had something to do with the different oats, but I really do not think so.

These are better than I thought they would be.  They are not very sweet, and do not have a strong coconut flavor.  Which was disappointing to me because I do like coconut.  If you like a crispy cookie you will like these.  Jayson said they were good, not great.  The boys loved them, which surprised me because the oldest does not like coconut at all.  Which just proves to me that there is not much coconut flavor.