Homemade Oatmeal Cookies

Who loves oatmeal cookies besides Mark? They are his favorite! They are really good and I’m loving this recipe myself, adding a few chocolate chips to some of them for my taste. Chocolate chips and oatmeal are great together, but Mark is a purist on these.

These cookies are Mark’s Nanny’s recipe. One he grew up with as a boy, so I have no idea where it originated from, but it goes back to her. Mark’s mom had the recipe and passed it onto me so now I’m baking these cookies for Mark and he is all smiles. I used a cookie recipe I found somewhere online, but they just weren’t the same to him. That recipe used butter instead of shortening and that must be the difference. Go figure! I would have thought that butter would taste better but these made with shortening are what takes Mark back to childhood and his perfect oatmeal cookies that his Nanny made for him. Once I got this recipe from Mark’s mom, there was no going back to another one.

Oatmeal Drop Cookies

by: Mark’s Nanny

I’ll add this recipe below the post so you can print it off. Some of these widgets do not show up on phone views, so I’ll go ahead and type it out here and add it to a printable recipe card too.

1 cup shortening (I use Crisco shortening sticks, so easy)

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup white sugar

2 eggs unbeaten

1 tsp. vanilla

Then add:

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. soda

1 1/2 cups flour sifted together (I do not sift)

3 cups oatmeal (use 3 min. or 5 min. oats)

Mix first 5 ingredients together, using electric beaters for best results. Add flour mixed with soda and salt. Then add 3 cups oatmeal. Mi

x with spoon until all oatmeal is blended. Drop on greased pan. Bake at 350º for 6 – 8 minutes or until slightly brown. Use 3 min. or 5 min. oats. (This part is important. I used regular oatmeal in one batch and the consistency just wasn’t the same, so be sure and use the quick oats.)

I bake mine slightly longer than 6-8 minutes, more like 9 or even 10. Mark likes then sort of soft so I just let them get slightly brown on the edges, let them sit a minute after coming out and then scoop them off to cool. The longer you leave them in to brown the crispier they will be, so just keep that in mind.

After mixing the wet ingredients with beaters, add in flour mixture and beat more with beaters.

I didn’t get a picture after adding the oatmeal, but here’s what’s left of my batter. These make 36 cookies depending on how big you make them.

I used a Tablespoon to drop them on the pan.

They come out golden and delicious.

And they have the best taste! I love them with chocolate chips right out of the oven! Mark likes them plain so I do most of them plain for him. These are very tasty oatmeal cookies, so I hope you’ll give them a try! Mark gives them his highest stamp of approval because they came from his Nanny and he has the fondest memories of both his Nannies.

Just an FYI, if you’ve gotten this far, this is an old post from 2019 that I’m resharing and I have decided not to do a whole cookbook. I know that so many of you were interested in a family cookbook from me, but if I do anything I will more than likely do an e-book with some of my mother’s favorite recipes instead of doing a whole cookbook. Her recipes are the ones you are most interested in, so that’s my decision. I’m still not sure when I will get to an e-book, but that will be what I attempt to do eventually. I’ve got plenty of her recipes to share! So please disregard the question below if you are reading after 2019! Thanks so much. 

Now for that question I have for you! 

This is a bit of a long story, so hang in there with me. When I got back from the cruise just a couple of months ago, I had a box waiting on me from a long time reader who I now consider a friend, Mary C. who lives here in Alpharetta, GA. I met her a few years ago and we’ve had lunch as well. She’s a dear lady and I think the world of her and she’s been reading along with my blog almost from the beginning. When I opened that box, I was never more surprised than to find 4 copies of this cookbook inside.

I had no idea that Mary was working on this cookbook for me of family recipes and my own recipes that I’ve shared on my blog over the years. It was a true labor of love and I was just astounded that she would do this for me! The 4 copies were for me, my mom, sister and niece. We all have a copy. She did a wonderful job and used a self publishing site for these cookbooks, spending much time pulling the recipes and text from my blog. She used my own words to write the cookbook and put it all together in a memorable way with pictures and text.

I’ve checked with the owner of the website on mass producing this cookbook if you all wanted to order it as well. Depending on how many copies are printed (for example from 100 to 500), it would be around $13 to $18, not including shipping. I’m not sure yet on shipping costs, since the company that prints these is in Canada. That would drive up shipping costs and right now I don’t know how much shipping would be.

I now have the online book template in my possession and can add to or remove things from the cookbook and tweak it even more. I would probably add a few more of my mom’s recipes and take out some older things that aren’t as important anymore. The book as it is has 75+ recipes ranging from Beverages, to Chicken dishes, main dishes and of course lots of desserts. I think I’ve shared more desserts than anything else!

Mary pulled pics of my family and these are sprinkled throughout the book too. I would leave in many of these pics as well as add a few more food pics too. She did such a great job and my family was just as amazed as I was that she did this for me! It was so fun to look through all the pages and read what she pulled from my blog posts to go with the recipes. All of my mom’s best desserts would definitely be in here as well as some of her other favorite dishes.

What I need to know from all of you is how many of you would order the cookbook? I may have to pre-order a certain amount of cookbooks and then figure out the shipping part of it. She could ship a whole pallet of cookbooks to me, but then I’d have to mail them all out individually which I really don’t want to do, so if I can get that part figured out to keep shipping costs down if she ships them out individually, that would be the best scenario.

Please let me know if you’d want to order a cookbook and what’s the most amount you’d be willing to pay? I’m just not sure yet how much shipping from Canada is going to affect the total cost. I need to talk to the cookbook website owner for more about that part. If I can get a good idea of how many would buy one, that would help me know if it’s going to be worth it to try to get a bulk amount printed up. Thank you so much!

I know over the years I’ve been asked over and over again to please do a cookbook with my mom. I just haven’t had the time and energy to devote to that, but Mary has done the leg work for me and now all I have to to is tweak it to make it the best little Southern Hospitality cookbook it can be! I’d love to make this available to all of you at a reasonable price. I won’t even make any money on this since self publishing is pretty expensive, but if I could get them out to you all for what it cost on the site, that would be great. I’d love that!

Just leave me a message and let me know if you’d order a cookbook and how much you would pay for it. Again, I need to check into the shipping cost more to see how this would impact the total cost. Also, you all may be interested in using the website to put together a cookbook for your family too. If that’s the case, let me know that too and I could ask the website owner about getting you all a discount for that part too. It’s a really neat site called Heritage Cookbooks. Check it out and let me know what you think!

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