This Easy Cowboy Cookie Recipe Has Been Everybody's Secret Favorite For Decades

Cowboy cookies are a favorite cookie recipe of my grandma. Packed with oats, chocolate chips, nuts, and toasted coconut, these cookies are sweet, soft, crunchy, and satisfying. Whether you're on a horseback trail ride or just need a snack to fuel your day, these are it! They also had a fun rise to stardom!

During the 2000 Bush-Gore presidential race, Family Circle magazine published cookie recipes from each candidate's wife and encouraged readers to cast their ballots. Tipper Gore's ginger snaps came in a mile short of Laura Bush's cowboy cookies, and this is almost that recipe, with a few tweaks from Grandma, of course.

Cowboy cookies!Photo byRichelleg

Ingredients

This recipe makes a cowboy sized batch, anywhere from 3-4 dozen

• Three cups of regular flour
• One TBSP baking powder
• One TBSP baking soda
• One TBSP of ground cinnamon
• One tsp of salt
• 1½ cups (3 sticks) room-temperature butter
• 1 1/2 cups of sugar, granulated
• 1½ cups of light brown sugar, packed
• Three eggs, room temp
• One TBSP of vanilla
• Three cups of chocolate chips, semisweet
• Three cups of traditional rolled oats
• Two cups of unsweetened coconut flakes
• Two cups (8 ounces) of chopped pecans

Optional: You can add your favorite dried fruit to the cookies, too!

Great warm, with cold milk!Photo byRichelleg

Directions:

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
• In a large bowl, combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt.
• Throw your butter in your mixer or in a separate bowl and cream it slowly, with the mixer set on medium, until it's smooth.
• Beat in sugars gradually to the butter until it's mixed well.
• Crack one egg at a time into the mixer.
• Add the vanilla.
• Add flour mixture and stir until just incorporated.
• Add the pecans, coconut, oats, and chocolate chips, mix until it's stirred together.
• Place about ¼ cup of dough on greased baking sheets, about 3 inches apart.
• Bake, rotating sheets midway through, for 15 to 17 minutes, or until edges are gently browned.
• Put them on a wire rack to cool.

Like chocolate chip cookies, but better!Photo byRichelleg