Guest Post: Oatmeal Chocolate Peanut Butter Clusters

Oatmeal Chocolate Peanut Butter Clusters!

Today is my first Guest Post, which comes from my wonderful sister, Jill over at  Create3Sixty5.com – Enjoy! ❤

Jill

I hope you don’t mind me jumping in here, I’m Jeanne’s sister, Jill Maciulla! Jeanne has been kind enough to mention me in several of her posts, so I feel like I know some of you!  Jeanne and I have a special bond not only as sisters, but as friends!  We love doing things together and always have a blast!  Whether it is cooking, crafting, sewing or going on photo excursions you’ve gotta know, we always laugh!   Truth be known, Jeanne is definitely a better bread maker, seamstress and probably the better all-around chef of the family, but I do like to cook as well.  So, the other day we were baking and I started telling her the story of my infamous cookies and she asked if I would share it with her blogging friends too!  So here goes….

What can I say…I love peanut butter, I love oatmeal and I love chocolate!

I’ve never been a huge fan of just plain chocolate chip cookies so one day I decided to add peanut butter to the recipe.  I knew that by adding the peanut butter it was going to make the cookie dough too soft, so I had to counter that by adding another favorite of mine—oatmeal.  I creamed the butter, peanut butter, shortening, sugar and eggs together and then added the dry ingredients.  A little less flour, a little more oatmeal.  Beat some more, add a little more oatmeal and a little more flour.  Then add the chocolate chips.  Well as long as I’m re-inventing this recipe… chocolate is good, but peanut butter chips are better, so I added some of those too.  A little add, a little delete, a little more, a little less and tadah….a new cookie is born!  The family absolutely loves this cookie!  It’s chewy on the inside and just a little crisp on the outside.  Packed with peanut butter and chocolate flavors that just make your mouth sing!  Oh, and let us not forget the addition of oatmeal makes them, well….healthy!!  So you can eat as many as you want! <ed. note (ahem!) >

My daughter-in-law, Jessie is an aficionado of all things sweet!  Not just any sweet will do!  She is finicky about the taste, texture and appearance of her sweets!  She doesn’t eat a lot (meaning a large quantity) of any dessert, but she does want the flavor to be sublime; one to make the calories and the experience totally worthwhile!  As time went on, these became the requested cookie at family functions.  My son, Jason, was in the Marine Corp at the time and he would tell me how much he missed my cooking!  So, I would freeze these cookies individually and then seal them in plastic and ship them overseas to Iraq!  He said it was the quintessential treat to open that package and find Mom’s fresh cookies!

So the more these cookies made their appearance, the question would always be…how do you make these delightful little morsels?!  In the past I would always say well, it’s basically just a plain old chocolate chip cookie recipe, and then you add a little of this and then add some more of that and omit this but change this ingredient to that, and then blend until  you know that the “texture” of the dough will produce the perfect little mound of a cookie!  My daughter-in-law said wow, no one can ever replicate that recipe! Good Lord, I’m calling these cookies “Cluster F’s!”   I laughed so hard at her choice of name, but that lead me to perfect and actually write down the ingredients to pull together a recipe that was repeatable.  And now,  (keeping it G-Rated for this blog post) I introduce our family favorite…Oatmeal Chocolate Peanut Butter Clusters!

Hope you enjoy them as much as we do!

Recipe By: Jill Maciulla of Create3Sixty5.com
Yield: 7 dozen

Ingredients:

2/3 cup shortening
2/3 cup butter
3/4 cup peanut butter
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 piece eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
3 cup flour
1 cup oatmeal
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup chopped nuts
2 pkg semisweet chocolate chips, 6-oz each
1 pkg peanut butter chips

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 375 degrees F.

2. Mix thoroughly shortening, butter, peanut butter, sugars, eggs and vanilla. Stir in remaining ingredients.

3. Drop dough by rounded teaspoonfuls 2 inches apart onto UNGREASED cookie sheets.  (I use parchment paper or silpats on cookie sheets)

4. Bake 8-10 minutes or until light brown.  Cool slightly before removing from baking sheet.

5. Makes about 7 dozen cookies

Description: “Soft cookies with chocolate, peanut butter and oatmeal!!   A Family Favorite”

Yield: “7 dozen”