Perfect Oatmeal Cookies

These cookies are wildly delicious, and though we've been making them for just over a year, they are one of my absolute all-time favorites. This is not your usual cakey, raisiny, cinnamony kind of oatmeal cookie. Instead they're buttery-edged and crisp but also teeth-stickingly chewy. Plus, they're a strange and beautiful color -- a kind of ruddy burnished gold that is very appealing. My family just loves them; everybody always loves them.

Hands-On Time: 20 minutes
Ready In: 35 minutes
Yield: 3 dozen

1 cup rolled oats
3/4 cup sweetened, flaked coconut
1 cup flour
1 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt (or half as much table salt)
1 stick butter (I use salted)
1 tablespoon Lyle's Golden Syrup (or light corn syrup)
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 tablespoons boiling water

1. Heat the oven to 300ºF and prepare a large cookie sheet. I cover mine with parchment paper for even browning and easy clean-up, but you could grease it instead.
2. In a large bowl, stir together the oats, coconut, flour, sugar and salt. Meanwhile melt the butter and syrup together in a small pot over low heat.
3. Stir the baking soda into the boiling water, then stir this into the butter and syrup and pour all of it over the dry ingredients. Stir well, then drop cookie-sized amounts (we use a heaping melon baller, which is about 2 teaspoons I think) onto the baking sheets, leaving plenty of space for them to spread.
4. Bake for 12-15 minutes, switching the pan around if you need to for even baking, until the cookies are golden all over and quite brown on the edges (keep an eye on them -- they can burn quickly); the cookies will look puffy when you remove them from the oven, and then they will sink and go a bit lacy. Leave them on the cookie sheet for 3 or 4 minutes before removing them with a spatula to cool on a rack; if you go at them too early, they will fall all to pieces.
5. Repeat: it will take 3 batches to get all the cookies baked. Yum.

*Ingredient Tips
Lyle's Golden Syrup is a honey-colored, sugar-based stickiness-in-a-tin syrup which until recently, was the kind of thing you had to beg traveling relatives to bring home for you from abroad. Now, however, you can buy it in a plastic bottle in all kinds of American stores, and we get ours in the Whole Foods nearby. I got these cookies from Cindy Hopper's lovely craft blog Skip to My Lou, Cindy uses light corn syrup instead and, given her good taste, I trust that this is a perfectly acceptable substitution.

Read more about Catherine making Perfect Oatmeal Cookies with her family.

See all recipes from Catherine Newman's "Dalai Mama Dishes" blog.