Coconut Oatmeal Cookies

Happy Hinamatsuri (a.k.a Girls' Day)! When I was a little girl growing up in Hawaii, we celebrated girl's day every year. Although I said this week would be eat me, delicious tribute week, I really wanted to make hishimochi. So my dad and I set out on a mission, we drove to three different stores but none of them carried glutinous rice flour. I guess we're the last gluten-loving people on the planet. Oh well, next year! I'll keep my eyes peeled, though, because I'd love to figure out how to make red bean stuffed mochi and mochi ice cream. Maybe I'll try somewhere like Ranch 99 next chance I get. Any other suggestions? Where would you all get glutinous rice flour from?

I needed to make something delicious to celebrate those double x chromosomes and my new favorite food blog, so I set to search and found a coconut cookie recipe. Given that I spent my early childhood in Hawaii eating mostly tofu, fruits, and vegetables (okay, and spam musubi and manapua, too), I love almost all things fruit, coconut especially. I had never baked with coconut before, and wasn't quite sure what to expect, but it is undoubtedly of my new favorite baking ingredients. I used the thicker unsweetened coconut (so good!) and organic oatmeal (mmmm!) and ended up with incredible cookies, but they were certainly a mouthful because of the large hunks of coconut. I didn't add the chocolate, and decided to make them more soft and chewy than crunchy, which I think is a personal preference. They were gone less than twelve hours later!

I received this phone call around 4:30: "Hey Erin, I just got home and I ate about three of your cookies in thirty seconds. I hope you don't mind, I was calling to make sure you wouldn't be upset if they were all gone by the time you got back. Your cookies are amazing, sweetie. Love you lots."

I was overjoyed. That was totally the purpose of making them.

May your baking adventures be as fruitful as mine (bad pun intended)!

Makes about 29 medium sized cookies
Coconut Cookies
adapted from: eat me, delicious, Barbara Boczany & This Week for Dinner

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
1 cup brown sugar, packed
6 tbsp sugar
2 large eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 cup flour
2 1/4 cups oats
1 1/2 cups dried unsweetened shredded coconut*

Preheat oven to 375F. Beat butter and sugars at high speed until fluffy. Add eggs and beat till blended. Beat in vanilla, baking soda, and salt. Add flour and mix at low speed until blended. Stir in oats, coconut and chocolate.

Arrange 1/4 cup mounds about 3 inches apart on large buttered baking sheets. Pat down to 1/2 inch. Bake on middle rack, 10 minutes (note: my rickety old oven is really inefficient, your baking time should probably be around 8 minutes). Cool one minute. Transfer to cooling rack.

*I made these with 1 heaping cup of unsweetened shredded and 1 cup of flaked coconut, and used ener-g egg replacer and earth balance to make it vegan. less nutritional value/ more ethical. i used semisweet chocolate chips on the last batch of cookies. Makes about 36.