Oatmeal Lace Cookies

Oh y’all, what do you do when you need to take a gift and the hostess doesn’t like chocolate?

Boone’s mama makes the most amazing chocolate covered peanut butter balls (read: an amazing homemade version of a Reece’s cup) every Christmas and this year we had like a zillion extra. We were going to a friend’s house for dinner and I thought we should take them a few (I mean, we could definitely eat ALL of the leftovers, but we probably shouldn’t, right?) but then Boone reminded me that our hostess hates chocolate. Seriously, hates chocolate.

I knew I needed to make something non-chocolatey, festive, and pretty, but was tired from all the holiday cooking. Thankfully I was lucky enough to run across what seemed like an easy recipe my mom used to make for dinner parties and ladies’ luncheons a few days earlier in The Memphis Cookbook from the Memphis Junior League. This little cookie crisp is sweet, and dainty, with a browned butter or caramel flavor, plus it looks pretty fancy although the ingredient list is super easy. Perfect.

FYI, The ingredient list was simple, but it took a little more baking finesse than i’d imagined. in fact, I made 2.5 batches to get the ratio of cookie to cookie sheet right (they spread out A LOT and my first batch ended up as one huge cookie stuck to parchment paper) and get them to look much like lace, and since I was giving them to a friend, they had to look “just so”. Read on for the recipe and my hints!

Oatmeal Lace Cookies (or butter snowflakes)
Yields: approximately 15-20

What You Need:
1/2 C Flour
1/2 C granulated sugar
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 C rolled oats
2 Tablespoon heavy cream
1/2 C melted butter
2 Tablespoons light corn syrup
1 Tablespoon vanilla

What To Do:
Preheat the oven to 375, and get started by sifting the flour, the sugar, and the baking powder together into a medium bowl. Add in the butter, oats, cream, vanilla, and corn syrup (so far so good, right?)

Once it’s all mixed together, drop small spoonfuls onto a greased cookie sheet. When I say “small” I mean a teeny tiny amount, y’all. Definitely less than a quarter sized spoonful but more than a nickel. Also, stay away from wax or parchment paper… A plain old cookie sheet will do.

You get the best spreading results if you smush the dough down flat a little. Also, make sure to leave plenty of room for the cookies to spread out (because they will spread, and spread a lot). I got best results when I put only 3 rows across on my sheet, and then about 4 cookies down which ended up being about 2 1/2″ to 3″ between the cookies.

Bake the cookies at 375 for 6-8 minutes or until they’re golden brown and have bubbly holes showing through. (Hence the “lace”). Once you’ve taken the out, let them cool for about 2 minutes and then lift them carefully from the cookie sheet with a thin spatula. Place them on a paper towel until they are crisp. It turns out that I broke about 1/4 of the cookies because I wasn’t careful enough, and just so you know, the ones lighter in color need a little longer to cool before you can pull them up with the spatula… If you try to pick them up too soon they get smushed together and look nothing like lace.

But if you get them just right you have THE PERFECT thin, crisp cookie to dress up a bowl of ice cream or serve at a ladies’ tea. Since I was taking these to a friend, i only wanted to give her the pretty ones, so whenever one got broken or had less than perfect edges I just had to keep it for us. (I know, right? so terrible. 😉 They were gone in a day since they’re so thin…I mean, you can have more than one when they’re small right?