I have heard that in the Maritimes these cookies are referred to as Spider Cookies!
I could lie and pretend that there was a Pan-Asian-inspiration going on when I made these cookies but the truth is, I had a migraine that ran me over like a Mac truck yesterday and flattened me completely. Last week when I was having my pity party I was so miserable I turned to my sister Jamie for foodie comfort and made her Chocolate Drop Quickies just for me!
The term hero cookie is usually used sarcastically and after much online debate between me and my siblings, we could not remember where the term came from in our household. Just that we used it from time to time in a joking way. And yet, I could not stop calling these cookies my hero cookies so darn it! I am changing the reference. For me, a hero cookie is a cookie you bake to turn yourself into a hero so that is what I did.
These have been Jamie’s favourite cookies since she was a little one. She used to make them and leave out the coconut because I hated it as a kid. Now as an adult, making them for myself, I decided to make a more adult version with the coconut. In a sauce pan I mixed 2 cups of sugar, 1/2 cup of butter, 1/2 cup of cocoa powder and 1/2 cup of milk. I brought it to a boil and then brought down the heat to medium and boiled for 3-4 minutes. Watch the pot! This boils up quickly, you don’t want to make a mess.
I had toasted up one cup of coconut and added it to the saucepan with around 2 1/2 cups of quick oats with 1 tsp of vanilla. If you do not like coconut like I didn’t as a kid Jamie’s recipe says to add 3 cups of oats. The important part is getting the consistency right. I just kept adding oats until the cookies would come together like this:
I put them on a Silpat-lined baking sheet and put them in the fridge until they hardened:
So chocolaty, so nostalgic! These cookies made me feel better. They made me feel loved and cared for. They made me feel like my own hero. Thank you so much Jamie!
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Yay! I’m glad you’re reclaiming the word Hero Cookie! What a nicer way to use the term. Some days you just need one – and these are great ones to make!
I have lots of great memories of these cookies and absolutely never get tired of eating them. I can’t believe you had them with coconut too! hehe. Enjoy!
I’ve never been a coconut fan either. But with oats — OMG these look good! And I especially love a no-bake cookie. I’m glad they worked their cookie magick on you and made you feel better!
Mmmm. We called them haystacks when I was a kid. I made them so often I had the recipe memorized! hmmm think I might have to make some this afternoon. Nothing like having a 2 and a 4 year old hopped up on chocolate and sugar!
The hero cookies worked! You’re our hero Suzie, I made the potstickers last night and my family just inhaled them. And of course my 6 year old daughter asked, “is this a Suzie recipe?” They all requested a second round tonite and I’ll be happy to oblige.
These cookies are amazing and I do love coconut, I’m going to have to put this on my to do list now that you have me craving coconut and chocolate.
Yum- I love no-bake cookies! I am making these when I’m home this weekend. It should help my chocolate craving!
Never heard of sarcastic hero cookies. I think your idea is much better, they certainly ‘saved’ you and that is all that we need to know.
I made these last week after I was too lazy to turn on the oven & wanted a quick after school snack ready. I’d forgotten that they were called Spider Cookies too. Ah, sweet memories 🙂
Your hero cookies look yummy! I know they are sweet, warm and delicious. Your making me hungry, Suzie.
I meant to say earlier, it is so cool we both have Aquarius moms. I hope your mom’s birthday was wonderful.
Yummy! My little guys call these cookies “Dirt Roads”…but hero cookie sounds much more appetizing!
In Stellarton growing up we called them Chocolate Macaroons in my house, but my friend called them “Haystacks”
I just whipped up a batch in the time since I posted that above – was really easy! First time I ever made them. I used 2 cups rolled oats and 1 cup flaked barley (mmmmm, beer ingredients) and then brought up the consistency with about another 1/2 cup oats
‘Round here those cookies are called “haystacks” and they grace three out of four pages of any of the “recipe booklets” that the kids do in school for special projects (which makes me glad my own daughter isn’t old enough to be a part of those booklets yet.
I read your pity party post too. I don’t think I could have put it quite so eloquently.
I was really taken by your phrases “Maybe everything is OK and that’s awesome. I am happy for you. But maybe you want to scream and feel you shouldn’t?”
and this one really got to me and made me feel like .. geez somebody finally *gets* it. *GETS* that somethimes you just have to take whats on the inside and try to get someone (anyone) to hear you.
“There she is having a picnic party all by herself, all sad and alone and pathetic when she should be focusing on the good in life.
Tell me something I don’t know. So you know what? Maybe in order to get to the positive, we have to work and express the negative. I know, it’s better to be all positive and lalalala but sometimes you just want to say, fuck it! I hate how things are.”
Personally I have been in a crappy place for a while and just haven’t found anyone who can say to me “you know what, you’re right, the situation you got yourself into is crap and its gonna be hell to get out of” but your post made me feel like, hey what the heck you’re not alone, other people get the crappy side of life sometimes too. Other people get to watch those around them fall in love, get married, live out their dreams … while I myself whither.
WIther is a good word for it. Its good to know that the world hasn’t been 100% rosy for everyone else. THat at least *someone* hassome crap in their life; that I am not the only one living in somebody else’s fairytale as the servant to pick up their dirty underware ad sit there wishing and hopign and knowing that … picking up other people’s dirty underwear is the best I cna ever accomplish.
Its not anarchy. Its accepting the inevitable. Its reality. Its the way things are. Garbage is garbage, and I am just another example among a hundred zillion others just like me. Worhtless pieces of crap who get what they deserve.
I know what its like to have no one who truly hears what is going on in your heart and mind and having o other way to make that come out of your body.
I’ll counter your toast. WIth a glass of vodka and a hope that someday, someone can hear me. That someday, something can make it better, make it go away, make it accepted, make it a part of me without making it a part that has wrecked me.
I’m sorry for intruding.
I’m from Cape Breton and we totally call them spider cookies, although sometimes my mother would call them sawdust cookies.
Awesome recipe! This is just what I was looking for. My mom makes these but rolls them in coconut and calls them ‘fridge cookies.’ (I’m from Sydney, NS.) Hers are a little too dry for me but your recipe is perfect and I followed it exactly!
Mari, I had heard these were called Spider cookies but wasn’t 100% sure until you wrote that, thank you.
Reunion Organizers, yes, these are fridge cookies and they usually have coconut in them which can make them dry. I am so glad that this way of making them was perfect for you, that rocks! Comments like yours keep me blogging, thank you for that.
These are a favourite around our home as well…however, while they’ve been called many names – the favourite name of my boys when they were little was “Cowpies”. Now that they are all grown up, they still love it when I make a batch of “Cowpies”.
Yup, I can see why they get that name too, funny they are known by so many by so many different names.