Here’s an oatmeal cookie recipe disguised as an easy peanut butter cookie.  It’s dressed up for the holiday season, but still easy to make and share.

I don’t mean to alarm the room, but are you aware that there are only 33 days left until Christmas?  Have you gotten your shopping finished?  Hell, have you gotten it started?  Are you a Black Friday or Cyber Monday kind of person?  Both of those events, by name alone, terrify me.  I imagine stampeding consumers in the malls (I always picture them carrying Slurpees), and sluggish internet connections at home that will prevent me from accessing my blog’s stats on regular five minute intervals.

I’ve purchased exactly ONE Christmas present so far this year (you’re welcome, Lauren), and short of that I don’t even have ball park ideas of what to get my family, friends, building manager and the building’s two maintenance engineers (I’m guessing cash is the best way to go for these two.  Am I right?).

MG has made things a little easier, sending me a few links to items he’d like to find under our artificial Christmas tree this year.  Yes it’s artificial, and it’s white too – but it’s really pretty.  Don’t judge.  I’ll take a picture and post it…  then you’ll see.

The only down side to the artificial tree is the lengthy assembly.  All the branches are categorized by different letters that have to be inserted into their corresponding sockets on the tree base, and then have to be snapped in securely.  I have trouble making the branches snap in.  MG politely regards me as I’m fiddling with a branch and finally says helpfully, “It snaps in, babe.”  I already know that it snaps in.  I’m just unable to accomplish the challenge successfully.  I’m branch-snapping deficient. I don’t know what he sees in me.

Wait… I know what he sees in me.  As he has reminded me in lyric: “You like cooking… I like eating… and that’s a combination there’s no beating!”

Peanut butter, chocolate chips and oatmeal all in one cookie seems excessive.  And you know what… it is, which is why these cookies are so amazingly awesome. Aside from being an over-indulgence (something you should definitely reward yourself with after going to the gym), you can bring warring cookie ingredient factions together in peace, song and handholding.  Perhaps give some baskets of these as holiday gifts to people you know and love in place of mall merchandise, which will only come back and haunt you when your Discover bill arrives in January.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies from Martha Stewart

• 3 cups old fashioned rolled oats
• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
• 1 teaspoon backing soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon coarse salt
• 1 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1/2 cup natural peanut butter
• 2 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 2 cups whole salted peanuts
• 2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Stir together oats, flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl; set aside.

Put sugars, butter, and peanut butter in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix on medium speed until pale and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Mix in eggs and vanilla.
**Note on the above:  I don’t have a paddle attachment.  I used the standard beaters and it worked just fine!

Reduce speed to low. Add oat mixture, and mix until just combined. Mix in peanuts and chocolate chips.

Using a 1 1/2-inch ice cream scoop, drop balls of dough 2 inches apart on baking sheets lined with parchment paper.

Bake cookies, rotating sheets halfway through, until golden brown and just set, 13 to 15 minutes. Let cool on sheets on wire racks 5 minutes. Transfer cookies to wire racks to cool completely.