Grandma's Monster Cookies

Usually when I post recipes on here, I include the link to website where I originally found the recipe because I'm not exactly brave enough in the kitchen to create my own recipes. However, I don't exactly have a link to the original location of this recipe. All I have is this:

The original, handwritten recipe from my late Grandma Bev. (Quick note for those of you who still hand write recipes--for the sake of your children and grandchildren, please use pen! I know writing in pen makes it harder to correct mistakes, but pencil smears and fades so easily.)  My grandmother loved baking, and some of my fondest memories of her are helping her cut out and decorate sugar cookies around Christmas. So when I stumbled across a box of her old recipes at my sister's house last winter, I quickly commandeered it (sorry Midge!). Unfortunately, many of the recipes were smeared or faded so badly that I couldn't make them out (plus my grandma used some strange abbreviations!), but this monster cookie recipe was perfectly readable. And it's a darn good thing it was, because this recipe is delicious (and deliciously easy). I've served it to three different groups of people over the past few days, and it's gotten nothing but rave reviews from everyone (someone even said it was better than the monster cookies sold at a bakery here in town!). You won't regret giving this recipe a try!

Grandma's Monster Cookies

2 cups brown sugar
2 cups white sugar
3 cups peanut butter
1 cup butter
6 eggs
4 tsp vanilla
4 tsp baking soda
9 cups oatmeal
1 12 oz pkg chocolate chips
1/2 pound M&Ms
1/2 pound chopped nuts (optional--add more M&Ms/chocolate chips if omitting)

Preheat oven to 375*. Beat together sugars and butter; stir in peanut butter until well mixed. Stir in eggs, vanilla, soda and mix well. Fold in (by hand) oatmeal, chocolate chips, and M&Ms. Drop by tablespoon full onto greased cookie sheet and bake for 10 minutes. Do not over bake.

I should also note that according to my grandma this recipe makes over ten dozen cookies. As I mentioned, my grandmother was a huge baker. It wasn't uncommon for her to provide sweets for a social event, and subsequently, it wasn't out of the norm for her to bake twelve to thirteen dozen cookies at one time. However, I *only* got seven dozen cookies out of my batch (and I swear I didn't eat that much dough). It is certainly easy enough to cut the recipe in half if you feel that is necessary, but they're good enough that you might as well just make the full batch and make someone's day by sharing them. And if you are intimidated by baking that many cookies, it really isn't that bad. All you need is a good system--two cookies sheets, cooling racks at the ready, and a container to move the cooled cookies into once the racks fill up.

Easy peasy! And so worth it--we're down to just four left out of our batch, and I'm thinking I might have to make some more again very soon!