The Famous and Delicious DWR Cowboy Cookie

Yep, so much for your New Year’s diet. We decided it’d been too many months since we’d had one and we NEEDED one. So, Lauren and I got together to make some cookies. And we made Ryan come down too to be the official photographer. Lauren and I had a ball. Ryan took great pictures, but I’m pretty darn sure that he was sick of us giggling broads by the end of the photo shoot.

Before I get started giving you instructions to make your very own cowboy cookies, I want to point out that Lauren and I were inspired for this by our hero–The Pioneer Woman. I could talk about her for hours, but in short–she’s a city girl that married a cowboy, has four kids, home-schools her kids, cooks delicious food, has a veggie garden, has a beautiful ranch house, takes amazing photos and, somehow, she has time to have a well-organized, witty, beautiful blog about it all.

Lauren and I love her. We wish we could be her. We almost got to talk to her once. Yep, we did. Lauren, Peyton and I drove clear down to Denver for her cookbook release signing. We anticipated the event being sort of low-key. In our vision, we’d walk into the bookstore, find the Pioneer Woman in some obscure back corner of the bookstore, and sit down and have a 30 minute conversation with her. We’d laugh and talk about ranch life and cowboys.

That’s not what went down. We showed up just in time for the book signing and were greeted by a line that stretched from the packed room where the Pioneer Woman was, up the stairs, around the bookshelves, to the front door. We were slightly disgruntled but still convinced the PW would want to talk to us. So we waited. And we waited. And waited. And Peyton started crying. And still, we waited. Finally, after hours in line I acquiesced to the fact that we’d stay there all night if we didn’t just go and leave our dreams of being BFF with the PW behind. So we left.

No PW cookbooks.

No PW signature.

No heart-shaped BFF necklace.

However, with inspiration from the superhuman PW, we’ve decided to go out on our own and share a few ranch recipes on our blog. We thought the Cowboy Cookie would be a great one to start with.

Here we go.

First, make sure you have everything you need:

I’ll give you the detailed recipe later but the main characters are chocolate chips, (yes I mention them first-chocolate is my third love–next to my cowboy and my baby girl, of course), butter (and I always prefer real butter to margarine–margarine is for wimps), walnuts (we’ll talk about nuts later) and old-fashioned oatmeal. The usual stuff too, flour, salt, eggs, vanilla, baking powder, baking soda, sugar, and brown sugar.

Add all the “wet stuff”

That is: butter, sugars, eggs, and vanilla

and cream together.

In a separate bowl, combine your dry ingredients: the flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, and oats.

Then add the dry stuff to the wet stuff. Lauren is very excited to be doing this. We discovered, during this hilarious endeavor, that modeling cooking is incredibly hard. Try to have someone take a picture of your hands and NOT smile. Really–try it. It’s hard not to giggle uncontrollably.

Next, add. . .

(drumroll please)

the prince of sweets,

the healer of heartbreak,

the sign of celebration,

the one and only,

the much loved chocolate chips!

Next, chop up some walnuts. And keep the knife handy. You might need it in a minute.

Okay, now mix in the chocolate and the nuts and, viola! Cowboy cookie dough is complete!

Now, remember I told you to keep that knife handy?

Well, here’s why:

somehow, this is when the husband magically appears.

This guy eats cookie dough like a cow eats hay. He’d do it all day, everyday if you let him.

Next, you’re going to take the dough and scoop out a big whole hunk of it. Like a heaping quarter cup of it. Your grandmother would be appalled–she likes teaspoon-sized cookies. If we made these teaspoon-size, we’d have to rename ’em Pansy Cookies. We ain’t no pansies. These are Cowboy Cookies.

Shape the humongous, mouthwatering, wad of dough into a nice round shape.

Then, place about six gigantic cookie balls on a regular sized, greased cookie sheet. At the ranch, we make these on our super-duper huge sheets so we can make more than six at once.

Bake these puppies at 350 degrees, waiting an agonizing 10-15 minutes.

I like to take them out when the edges are just barely brown. The center sometimes seems a little soft still, but the cookies stay soft and chewy when cooled that way. Yum!

And, Finally! The judgement time is here. Grab some milk. Break the cookie in half, noticing the chocolate strands stretching between the two halfs. Smell the delicious aroma. Now slowly, dip it in and watch the drops of milk drip off the chewy yet crunchy goodness. Take a bite.

And suddenly, you’re back at the ranch.

Drowsy Water Ranch Cowboy Cookies

1 cup butter

1 cup sugar

1 cup brown sugar

2 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

2 cups flour

2 cups old-fashioned oats

6 oz chocolate chips

chopped pecans or walnuts to taste

Beat eggs, sugars, butter, and vanilla together. In separate bowl, combine soda, powder, salt, flour and oats. Add dry ingredients butter mixture. Blend well. Stir in chocolate chips and nuts by hand or paddle. Dough will be stiff.

Drop about ¼ cupfuls onto greased baking sheet with 3-4 inches between each cookie. Bake 10-15 minutes at 350 degrees until edges are golden brown but middle is still spongy. Cool for a few minutes before removing from cookie sheet and devouring.