I’ve been wanting to try a classic no bake cookie recipe with maple syrup instead of sugar using oats that had been toasted in order to partially cook them. (Okay, so technically the oats are baked, but the cookies themselves are not.) I started by doing some research into pre-existing recipes. The main problem I had was – there were so many of them! And they were all a little bit different. Various recipes changed the ratios on the sugar, cocoa, and peanut butter, not to mention wildly different amounts and kinds of milk and butter or oil. Which way to jump?
I decided to start with a basic recipe that went high on the cocoa powder and peanut butter and sub in the maple syrup. I went with the recipe from Simple Joy. (Original recipe at https://www.simplejoy.com/chocolate-peanut-butter-no-bake-cookies/ ) I did cut the recipe in half and toasted the oats ahead. They turned out good – fudgy and rich with tons of peanut butter and chocolate flavor. The consistency was the only problem, they aren’t going to be able to sit out. These need to be stored in the fridge.
In putting the maple syrup in, I did a little research on making fudge with maple syrup too, and decided to cook the maple syrup a little longer to get a temperature that should set up better. The maple fudge recipes from Canada called for bringing the maple syrup to 236 to 240 degrees. I only went to 223 and didn’t cool it before I beat the air in. However, I did add cold peanut butter from the fridge which cooled it considerably.
I may play with this recipe some more in the future, but here’s what I came up with.
Toasted Oat PB & Cocoa No-bake Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 ½ cups quick cooking oats
- 1 cup maple syrup
- ¼ cup whole milk
- 4 tablespoons unsalted butter
- ½ cup creamy peanut butter
- 1 ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
Directions
- Preheat the oven to 375.
- Spread the oats on a large, clean cooking tin with an edge.
- Bake for seven to nine minutes, stirring after every 3 minutes, until the oats brown.
- Set them aside to cool.
- In a medium pot, stir together the maple syrup, butter, and milk.
- Bring to a boil over medium high heat, stirring gently but continuously.
- Boil at a full rolling boil for approximately 3 minutes, stirring lazily.
- Remove from heat and stir in the peanut butter and vanilla.
- Stir, stir, stir until it turns nice and glossy.
- Now stir in the oats.
- I used a medium cookie scoop to drop these onto parchment paper and they sat right where I put them, no running away.
- Cool at least 30 minutes.
- I cut the parchment paper into squares around the fudgy cookies and stored them in the fridge. This made 18 large no-bakes.
Melora Johnson's Muse 