My sisters are so cool. I just visited with one this evening and we munched on these delights. My other sister has even won a blue ribbon as a 4H girlie at our home state State Fair. Yeap. She’s the babe and we just relish her success by eating up the goodies.
I haven’t made these cookies in more than ten years, but the flavor for them has never faded. My old recipe card with stains, smudges, and cookie-love-marks has long since disappeared, sadly. that only allowed me one more joy – a phone call home to my mom for the recipe. And how cool is my mom? She just looked it up on her laptop for me. LOL. Duh! Why am I still looking for my recipe card????
Also thanks to the phone call, I finally remembered to ask my mom just who Aunt Selma is anyway. After all, we’ve been making these cookies for over 25 years and all the while calling them “Aunt Selma’s Best Ever Oatmeal Cookies” and I don’t think I’ve ever known who she was. Needless to say, despite my 25 year belief that Aunt Selma was actually my relative, she (according to my mom who is even unsure) is actually the aunt of Mrs. S who worked with my sister (the babe) with the 4H club. ACK! Never mind! Let’s just send some love through the air and prayers for Aunt Selma – wherever and whoever you may be. These cookies are AWESOME!
They melt in your mouth.
They … well… they are wickedly addictive – be warned!
Here’s the recipe. Once you bite in, please.. send a little love to your own Aunt Selma (or mine or Mrs. S’s… or someone’s) in thanks.
Aunt Selma’s Best Ever – Blue Ribbon Winning – Oatmeal Cookies
Ingredients:
1 cup shortening (Crisco)
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups GF flour mix (with xanthan gum)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups GF oats OR quinoa flakes
3/4 cup nuts – OPTIONAL
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 350F.
- Cream together sugars and shortening.
- Add egg and vanilla. Beat together for one minute.
- Whisk together: flour, cinnamon, baking soda, salt, and oats.
- Add dry ingredients to creamed shortening/etc.
- Mix until well combined.
- Add nuts – if using – and briefly mix again.
- Form into 1 1/2 inch balls and place 2″ apart on cookie sheets
- Bake for 10-12 minutes until golden brown.
- Cool on a cooling rack (to avoid further cooking on hot cookie sheets).
MUNCH a few with your sister and smile while you chat about the other sister! Trust me! She’ll know you were smiling when you were talking about her and eating these Blue Ribbon cookies. She’s your sister. She knows ALL. In fact, even with a phone call, she will instinctively know you are writing about her cookies and post a note on your flickr pictures before you can even get your blog entry posted. She’s that cool.
And the other sister? She’s so cool, she’ll bring home cookies to share with her family and spread the word. Aunt Selma’s cookies are the BEST EVER and they could just win you a Blue Ribbon. LOL
Happy Cookie Eating, sisters! =)
-Kate
Looks so good. I think I need to make some cookies now. I love that they are called Aunt Selma’s cookies, even though she is not your aunt.
That rocks.
LOL – Don’t we all have recipes that have such titles? I swear when I open my recipe cards they are all named for someone. I LOVE that – it’s family history passed along in a beautiful way. Now… if only I knew who Aunt Selma was! LOL – Kate
You are making it hard to choose what to make, Kate! 🙂 Too many good recipes at Gobsmacked!
OH! I *so* could have posted this comment on your blog too, Natalie! Seriously! I think I’m gaining weight by bloggigng! Who knew there would be such dangers in the land of internet food bloggers! LOL – Kate
I have this nasty bug and would kill for a cookie like this. My mom (not my aunt) would make Snickerdoodles, which I have to convert some day soon.
OH! I love Snickerdoodles too! And monster cookies… and … well… COOKIES! I love COOKIES! My friends were joking a while back about playing an online game and chatting online with me when we spoke for FAR too long about cookies… and I just had to take a break and whip up a mini-batch of sugar cookies. LOL. Those bugger friends – they totally sucked me in with their sweet nothings – errrr… I mean cookie talk! LOL -Kate
Kate… this is just not fair! And here I’ve already come up with my menu!! Oh… kick the menu! I’ll have to try these too! I’m such a sucker for cookies!! 😉 Thanks for sharing! You take such wonderful pictures!!
Oh! I admire you, Sea, GF Mommy, etc – those of you who can actually write a menu – AND stick to it! Truly – not my skill YET. LOL. We eat by the whim of our taste buds around here. I’m sure that has much more to do with the lack of kidlets (so far) and will probably change once we are blessed with another set of taste buds to appeal to. LOL
And thanks for the picture compliment – It’s really fun to play around with my camera in the kitchen. =)
-Kate
Hi! I just came across your site because my new roommate is gluten free. I’m big on making chinese dumplings/potstickers and was wondering if you had any suggestions on flour combinations. Generally I mix half wheat flour with hot water and the other half with cold water then combine into a big ball. I roll out hand sized circular wrappers and fill them with the filling. For dumplings I’ll boil them in water and for potstickers I’ll just fry it (kind of tortilla consistency) in the pan.
I don’t think I can use the rice paper from asian markets because they are too big…
Any suggestions???????
Hello Lisa –
Sadly, I don’t have a pot sticker replacement – yet! Gluten-free doughs don’t generally roll out as neatly as a wheat-based dough like the one for pot stickers. I think a general gluten free pasta recipe may work though – I’ll have to try it out! Now you’ve gotten me thinking!
-Kate
Cute, says me, sister number 2. Just for the record, however, I am very much not cool. In fact , there is nothing cool about me… so ha!
Bah! You are too funny! I think it’s utter coolness that you are EXACTLY like you are. =) Absolutely! -Kate
OK – So I too am one of the sisters, Yes, you might have guessed the one that claims to know Aunt Selma because she and Mrs. S worked with me to earn that Blue Ribbon at the Fair……for good reason – those of you that have tried these cookies already know. If you haven’t…well…what are you waiting for?! This is an awesome cookie and could well be the reason I am so addicted to cookies in general!
Anyway, KT, I thought you might like to know that since I spied your photo the other day, the craving has not diminished – at all! And so what happens, today I get up, read the paper online and realize I haven’t been to your blog lately, so I should check it out too…..twenty minutes later, I was in the kitchen, mixing bowl out and viola! The cookies are done and I am heading to work with fresh cookies out of the oven. Once again Smart Sister Kate, YOU ROCK! I love this blog you’ve got! You do a great job! Where do you find all this time!?!
Have a great day – duty calls!
Yumm, Sis. Thanks for the sweet comments! Time? What time? OH! You mean the insomnia! Yea, this helps. LOL.
I LOVE YOU! You’re colleagues are lucky to be getting cookies today. =) But MORE lucky to work with YOU, K2!
=)
-Kate
Would love to try your oatmeal recipe but it doesn’t say what temperature to bake them in.
-C
Holy Molé!
I can’t believe I missed the termperature. LOL. So sorry about that!
We bake them at 350F. Thanks for pointing out this omission!
I will make the post correction now. =)
-Kate
I tried this recipe tonight. I used the Better Batter brand of flour. Aunt Selma must be a sea level because at 6000 feet, these cookies just spread out flat and crumbled into a million pieces when we tried to eat them. I divided the dough in half so I could make some with raisins and some without. The first batch was w/o raisins. When I saw them spread out, I added 1/4 cup more flour to the other 1/2. When I baked the second half, they didn’t spread out because of the added flour, but they were still so crumbly as to be difficult to eat. Not sure how to fix them. Loved the taste, but I need to figure out how to fix the texture. Any suggestions?
I’ll ask my mom. 🙂 She’s had more experience at high altitude baking than have I (me = 0…LOL).
Sorry they didn’t work… they truly are our fav oatmeal cookies around here!
I just made these cookies today and it has made me the HAPPIEST person ever. I have to avoid gluten/wheat now, completely, because of FM, Migraines, and H Pylori, to name a few. These are wonderful. I found the recipe today and made them today. I put in place of the 1/2 cup of GF flour, I used Almond flour and it is delicious. I added craisins, pecans and raisins too. YUMMY! Thank you for sharing!
I’m pretty sure that Aunt Selma’s cookie recipe came from the I Hate to Cook Cookbook by Peg Bracken…a book I got as a bride back in the 60s and still use. For the nuts, though, you need to grind them before adding, and mash the cookie ball with a buttered/sugared flat-bottom glass before baking.
Oh! We’ve never smooshed the cookies – but it is totally worth trying! I love these cookies so! 😉
Thanks, Ann!
Hmm…IWe found them a little too sweet for our taste, so I cut down to 1/2c white sugar & ended up adding almost 1/2 c almond meal – that added extra body, and also weren’t quite as sweet. but delish nonetheless….especially full of raisins! 🙂
I am new to this, very little baking experience so I just follow the instructions exactly.
What is the “Flour Mix”w/xanthan gum?
Does that refer to something specific? Some trade name? Some specific mixture that I can find the ingrediants?
Hi Doug – Please forgive my late response. You can find a link for the mix of flours that I use here:
https://glutenfree.wordpress.com/my-gf-flour-blend/
Some commercial flour mixes already include xanthan gum, so you don’t need to add it.
For cookies, I do use about 1 tsp per 1 1/2 cups of flour or so. It helps bind the cookies together.