Reese’s Pieces Oatmeal Cookies

Ages ago, I started a new job as an Assistant Dean. I learned that there was a tradition that the deans bought presents for the staff at the Holidays. That worked out well until I got divorced and was on an excruciatingly tight budget. So, to save money that year, I baked cookies and individually wrapped them for all the staff. As I recall, I made ten different kinds of cookies, and each batch made about two dozen cookies. Cooking all that dough used up most of the Thanksgiving break, but at least the gifts were well received.

I kept this up for almost ten years. Eventually, my budget recovered, and I was really sick of making cookies, so I was looking forward to just purchasing conventional gifts–calendars, coffee mugs, etc. However, as Thanksgiving approached all the staff started telling me how much they were looking forward to my cookies.

I didn’t have the heart to tell them how much I’d come to loathe baking cookies, so I went ahead and ground out dozens of cookies over Thanksgiving for a couple of more years. Eventually, I got another job and was smart enough to not bake cookies for the staff. In fact, I went nearly twenty years without baking cookies for any purpose. Yes, I was that sick of it.

More recently, I’m retired and stuck at home, self-isolating during the pandemic. As a consequence, I’ve been cooking more and sharing some of my experiences here on this blog. This week, I broke down and made chocolate chip cookies, except I used a mixture or Reese’s Pieces and chocolate chips. I dug out an old chocolate chip recipe cookie and updated it with the new ingredients. I wish I could give credit to the source for this old recipe–it may have been my mother, or my ex-wife, or even copied from a bag of chocolate chips. But, wherever I got the original, these worked out pretty well, and weren’t nearly as onerous to make as I’d remembered.