Monster Cookies for Dad

Hope everyone has had a great Father's day, be it showering your husbands or father's with attention, or if you are the dad and were the recipient of much praise and adoration. Or if it was a time of quiet reflection of the dad who's no long with you, hopefully with many happy memories left behind.

I don't talk in depth about the dad of my kids here on the ol' blog very much, other than a casual mention. He's kind of a private person and I'm sure prefers it that way.  (Thank goodness I'm not a well known blogger who scatters pictures of her entire family all over the place...ha!)  But I have to say he's a great dad and a great husband and we are blessed to have him.  Since I was feeling especially thoughtful with it being father's day and all, I wanted to do something extra nice and make some cookies that reminded him of his past.  He had recently got his hands on his grandmother's monster cookie recipe, so I decided to take a stab at making them for him.

No pressure there!  These cookies hold memories that are near and dear to him, and my hope was that even if they weren't just like grandma's, they would at least remind him of her cookies and bring back happy feelings of a simpler time.  

I had the pleasure of meeting his grandmother only once, she has since passed.

  We traveled to Iowa and stayed with her for a few days.  I remember  sitting at her kitchen table and watching in amazement while she made a pie completely from scratch, never once consulting a recipe, and chatting the whole time.  I'm sure that sort of thing was as natural to her as brushing her teeth.  

So how did the cookies turn out?  Were they just like grandma's or was there something lacking?  I'll never know of course, because my husband would be too kind to tell me they weren't up to snuff.  But they are definitely tasty!  I made the entire recipe and boy do they make a lot!

Here's a scan of the copy of Grandma Litwiller's recipe that I followed.

I was surprised after reading through the recipe more closely there was no flour!  I wondered if it was a mistake...but I decided to trust the recipe and go with it.  And I started to improvise and use butter, but then decided if the lady said oleo, I'd better do what she said.  We left out the coconut, and as far as a "bag" of m&m's, I just threw in however many made my skirt fly up.

I had Simon in the kitchen helping me each step of the way. He helped with  the m&m's by stuffing the majority of them into his face. 

okay, maybe I scatter a few pictures here and there, but I'm not well known so it's okay :)