No-bake bodega cookies

I recently came upon the dilemma of needing some cookies. And by “recently” I mean a couple hours ago, and by “needing” I mean I was bored out of my mind and emotionally eating. Anyways, I needed cookies, and I needed them fast. In the past no-bake cookies had always served me well. Fast, easy, and a short list of ingredients, they were a quick fix. However, the last months have been marked with a peanut butter drought.

Ah, peanut butter. Once a staple in our childhood diets, it has now become a prized, precious, and evasive imported good. This comforting and coveted treat is loved amongst PCV’s (and any U.S. traveler, really) as it doesn’t need refrigeration, it takes forever to go bad, and it’s packed with delicious nostalgia and enough nutrients to convince ourselves it’s okay to eat by the spoonful. But, it’s pricey, hard to come by, and often guarded and hoarded away from sight of host family and fellow volunteers alike.

My first months in site I budgeted money just for peanut butter and nutella (racking up a total of 50 soles when bought together), but now that I’ve been here awhile and have adjusted to life in Peru, I just can’t bring myself to pay for it time and time again. Unlike coffee, which I spend more money on than my internet, but that’s another story for another day. Anyways, back to the cookies!

So I said to myself, “Do I really need peanut butter for no-bake cookies?”

Some might call blasphemy and sacrilege that I would even utter such words, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Upon looking at my current no-bake recipe I realized peanut butter, while an integral part of no-bake cookies tastiness, is not what holds the recipe together. I could replace the peanut butter with other flavors and still have a cookie.

Using ingredients found at my local bodega, here's my recipe for a twist on no-bake cookies that I think you’ll like. I wrote this out for my fellow PCV friends who are searching bodegas all through the campo for simple tasty meals and treats, but I can guarantee those of you back in the motherland will love them as well. I personally ate 10 in a row. 

Cinnamon-Orange No-Bakes

Ingredients:

Almost everything you need is pictured here, except for the sugar.

• 3/4 cup milk
• 1 cup sugar (Original recipe calls for 2. Seems completely unnecessary to me.)
• 1 tablespoon orange zest (you should only need one orange to do the job, depending on how zesty you want to get. Hopefully your campo kitchen has a grater of some kind).
• 2 tablespoons cocoa powder (Cocoa Winters is the best for the job, and I usually use more than 2 tablespoons, but I like the rich cocoa flavor).
• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon (If you’re in Peru making this recipe, you’re going to need to use a lot of cinnamon—it’s super weak here. In the states I would say about 1/2 tablespoon, but I used about 1 in my batch, if not more.)
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 3 cups oats (3 cups is the what the original recipe calls for, but I don't measure, I just pour until it looks good.)
• pinch of salt 

1. In a medium pot mix together the milk, sugar, cinnamon, cocoa, and orange zest.
2. Put on stove at medium heat and bring to boil without stirring and let it do its thing for about a 1 ½ minutes.
3. Turn off heat and mix in vanilla, pinch of salt, and oats.
4. Spoon out scoops of cookie mixture onto a plate or wax paper and form into cookie shapes.
5. Wait for the cookies to cool down and scrape out the inside of the pot and lick the crap out of the spoon, cause you’re not going to want to waste any of this!

I may have eaten half of them before thinking to take a picture