Honey Nugget Cookies

These belong to the great American tradition of pantry cookies: simple ingredients, big yield, almost impossible to mess up. The combination of honey and brown sugar gives them a deep, almost caramel sweetness with that faint floral edge only honey delivers.

The oats do double duty. They keep the centers chewy and pleasantly nubbly, and they stretch a single batch to 72 cookies, enough for a cookie tin, a bake sale, and the snack jar with leftovers.

A single teaspoon of cinnamon is the only spice and that’s plenty. It pulls everything toward gingerbread territory without crossing the line into spiced-cookie complexity.

Kitchen Tips

• Cream the shortening, sugars, honey and eggs thoroughly before the dry ingredients hit the bowl. Honey is sticky and resists incorporating later if you add it after the flour.
• Drop the dough by rounded teaspoonfuls and leave plenty of space between cookies. They spread more than a typical butter cookie thanks to the honey.
• Pull them at 10 minutes if you want chewy centers, 12 minutes for crisper edges. They look underdone when they should come out, then firm up on the sheet.
• Store with a slice of bread in the cookie tin to keep them soft for days. The cookies steal moisture from the bread and stay chewy.

Variations

• Stir in 1 cup of raisins, dried cranberries or chopped dates for fruity bursts.
• Swap half the oats for chopped walnuts or pecans if you want crunch alongside the chew.
• Add a handful of chocolate chips for an oatmeal-honey-chocolate cookie that disappears even faster.