Food Friday: Almond Joy Cookies

Almond Joy Cookies!  Doesn't that sound just great?!  I love Almond Joy candy bars.  Have not had one for some little time, though.  When I saw this recipe I had to try it.

There are only four ingredients in the recipe:

1 14-ounce bag sweetened coconut--store brand works as well as name brand
2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
3/4 cup somewhat chopped lightly salted almonds
1 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk--store brand fine here, too.

In a very large bowl (I had just acquired a nice stainless steel 7-quart bowl to use in sauerkraut-making so I used that), place all the ingredients.  If your almonds are not already chopped, use a food processor or high speed blender or hand chopper to chop them rather well.  Stir until the "dough" is well mixed.

All ingredients in the bowl ready to mix

Using a small scoop, ours is just under 2-Tablespoons in size, smaller would probably be good, too...scoop out the mixture onto a parchment=lined cookie sheet.  These cookies don't spread so you can snuggle them up close to each other.

Batter mixed and ready to scoop

Make at 325 degrees F. Start checking them for browning at 12 minutes.

Almond Joy cookies ready to cook

Our oven took 16 minutes to cook them to my preferred degree of brownies.  I carefully pulled the parchment-paper-with-cookies-on-it onto a cooling rack and let them cool for 15 minutes.

Lightly browned cookies, cooling

 Well, who am I kidding?!  I took the first one to Dear One while it was still quite warm.  He did not complain.

If you don't eat all the cookies right up, store them in an airtight container.

This is a recipe you need to make when you are not trying to diet or only eat health foods because it is almost impossible to keep your fingers out of the "dough".  The only saving grace here is that this is very sticky. I don't personally enjoy stickiness (remember the blackstrap molasses story about my childhood?  If not, I am pretty sure it is on Grammie's Kitchen and Bedtime Stories blog...) so I was able to only go back to the bowl a few times!

The next time I bake these cookies, I will have the confidence to bake them a little longer to get them more brown.  As soon as something else is out of the oven I will bake up the rest of the cookies.

Enjoy these Almond JOY cookies!

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