Cowboy Cookies, Laura Bush’s Winning

By MarieR

Ingredients

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 tablespoon baking soda
• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) butter, room temperature
• 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 1 1/2 cups packed light-brown sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 3 cups semisweet chocolate chips
• 3 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
• 2 cups sweetened flake coconut
• 2 cups chopped pecans

Details

Adapted from tasteofhome.com

Preparation

Step 1

hile the butter softened, I prepped all of my ingredients. In the cooking industry, this is called mise en place, and I highly recommend doing it. It’s more work upfront, but then it’s smooth sailing. I mixed the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt in a bowl. Instead of using measuring cups, I measured by weight. This gives a more accurate measure of the ingredients. Here’s a handy conversion chart that I printed out and stuck on my fridge.

Once the butter was softened, I beat it for one minute. Then, I added the sugars, and beat for another two minutes. Next, I added the eggs, beating after each one, and then the vanilla. Once the wet ingredients were mixed, I gradually added the flour mixture. Finally, I mixed in the goodies—chocolate chips, oats, coconut and pecans.There was a mound of dough in the bowl and each batch bakes for 17-20 minutes at 350º. That’s a lot longer than the standard 10-12 minutes! Plus, these are oversized cookies (1/4 cup of dough per cookie), so I could only baked 4 cookies on a pan