Today, I decided to make something I haven’t made in many years. A no bake cookie.
I was first introduced to them by a friend in high school, while visiting her place. She called them S**t Balls, and that’s the name that has stuck for me!
KH, if you’re reading this, yes, it’s you’re fault! 😂
Since then, I’ve found them by many other names. It wasn’t until I got a community cookbook from the mid 90’s gifted to me that I actually saw a recipe for them. In fact, there were three almost identical recipes, all with different names! There is 5 Minute Boil cookies, using all brown sugar, Chocolate Drop Cookies, using all white sugar but skips the salt, and Fiddle Diddles, using margarine instead of butter, skipping the coconut, but including salt.
My version is a blend of all three.
Here is a slideshow of progress photos, for a double recipe.
Here is the basic, single recipe, and then I’ll go into more detail.
S**t Balls – No Bake Chocolate Cookies
2 cups sugar, white, brown or half and half
up to 1 cup cocoa
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup milk
1/2 tsp vanilla
3 cups rolled oats
Combine sugar, cocoa, butter and milk in a saucepan. Bring to a boil. Keep at a boil for 2 – 5 minutes (shorter time for white sugar only, longer time for brown sugar only), stirring constantly.
Remove from heat, stir in vanilla, then stir in rolled oats.
Drop spoonfulls onto trays lined with waxed or parchment paper. Cool until set. Can be chilled or frozen.
Optional ingredients:
1 cup shredded coconut (but why ruin your cookies??)
1/4 tsp salt
Easy Peasey!
First hint: use a bigger pot than you might think you need.
For my double recipe, I used our bigger stock pot. Once it starts boiling, it can bubble and expand quite a lot, and when the vanilla gets added at the end, it can sometimes foam right up.
Second hint: prepare your trays ahead of time. For my double recipe, I ended up using three 9×13 baking trays, lined with parchment paper.
In the first photo with the ingredients, I have doubled everything except the cocoa. Some recipes use only a 1/2 cup of cocoa, or even just 4 tsp, which is nothing. However, a cup of cocoa is a lot, so in doubling the recipe, I left the cocoa at 1 cup.
There is no salt in the photo, but as I was getting the mixture to a boil, I did add a few cranks from our salt grinder. Nowhere near the half teaspoon for a doubled recipe, but enough to make a difference. A touch of salt brings out the sweetness. Not that this recipe needs anything to bring out the sweetness!
The main ingredient is sugar, and what sugar you use can make a HUGE difference!
If you want a soft and chewy cookie, go with all brown sugar. You definitely have to boil it for a full 5 minutes, though. In the past, I’ve found ambient humidity can make a difference. Even after boiling at least 5 minutes, when it was humid out, the cookies just wouldn’t set and remained sticky and gooey. They still tasted good, but could only be eaten with a spoon!
If you like a dry cookie, use all granulated sugar, and you can get away with boiling it for only 2 minutes. With my double recipe, I boiled it for three minutes. The longer you boil it, the drier the cookie will be.
Of course, if you go with half and half (which is actually what I usually do), you’ll get a cookie that’s a bit moister, but not completely soft. For that, boil it for about 3 or 4 minutes.
The butter I used was still cold from the fridge, so I broke that up with my wooden spatula and stirred pretty constantly while bringing the mixture to a boil. It would be very easy for the sugar to start burning, so watch your temperature, too. Medium high is more than enough to get it to a boil and keep it there.
After the boiling time is done, take it off the heat and stir in the vanilla. Next, add the rolled oats and stir that in very thoroughly.
With the rolled oats, I used slow cooking oats, which have thicker flakes. You could use quick oats as well, but I find they lose their texture more. It’s just a matter of preference.
If you are using shredded coconut, it would be added with the rolled oats. Which we have never done, because none of us like shredded coconut. Ew.
Once the rolled oats are well mixed in, it’s time to drop the cookies.
I used a pair of soup spoons for this; one to scoop up the mixture, the other to scrape it off and onto the prepared pan.
Which can get very messy.
The two photos at the end with the cooling cookies, the first one is of the first tray of cookies, the second is of the third tray of cookies. You can see the first tray, there is more “spread” to the cookies, because it was still quite hot. It got easier to drop the cookies as the mixture cooled down. If you want to shape them a bit, you can use the spoons like you’re doing a quenelle, except round. I couldn’t do it with the first tray, as the mixture was still too hot and runny, but by the time I was doing the last of them, the mixture was starting to harden a bit too much!
With the size of spoons I used, I ended up with about 65 cookies in total, filling about 2 1/2 of my 9×13 trays. To chill them (and keep them safe from cats walking on them), the trays got moved onto the chest freezer in the old kitchen, where it is at or below freezing.
There you have it! A decidedly… questionable looking… no-bake drop cookie that takes very little time to make.
Enjoy!
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 