Last time, on “The miLam Curated Exhibits”…
No-Bakes are your best defense against the stress, depression, anxiety, and uncontrolled rage that can come about from manning a busy kitchen. In Exhibit I: No-Bakes Therapy, we learned how pissed off a guy can get when he runs out of peanut butter. We also discovered several ways to self-medicate with food, and most of them didn’t involve illegal contraband. Then we got out a large soup spoon and ate a whole batch of No-Bakes right out of the pot, letting their warm deliciousness bathe our fury, fear, and sadness in sugar, butter, and cocoa.
In this epilogue, miLam will respond to the oft-asked question, “Not having to bake these cookies sure makes things easy – but not easy enough. Can you make them even easier?” Obviously, asked by someone who would have to grunt in order to operate the lever on a La-Z-Boy. Seriously? You have to boil a couple easy-to-find items for about one fucking minute, and stir it with a spoon! I guess if you can’t do it in a Snuggie, it’s too hard to do!! Maybe you can go to the store to see if they sell No-Bake batter in a tube that you can squirt out onto cookie sheets and then not bake them!!!
(OK … I need to calm the hell down. Somebody hand me my No-Bakes.)
No-Bake Hacks
These tricks and tips will help you no matter what kind of No-Bake you’re not baking. (Refer to Exhibit № 1 for the recipes.)
[1]
Silpats are super-cool, but not essential. Wax paper works well as a platform for your hot, newly minted No-Bakes, but the heat from the cookie may cause the wax from the paper to transfer to your counter top. No big deal … but if you’d rather not have that happen, use a layer of
aluminum foil underneath the wax paper. Parchment is a workaround for lack of wax paper, but the cookies may stick to it, plus parchment can’t be quickly re-shaped into a hat to protect you from Facebook’s new mind probe wave. The Silpat will merely scramble your thoughts into French. A double layer of
foil and wax paper is your only safe bet.
[2]
Oats: Most No-Bakes require one-minute oats. But instant oats, quick oats, old-fashioned oats, Scottish, steel-cut … can they make it any more complicated??? If you open your cupboard to find Scottish or steel-cut, you’re completely screwed. You might as well just curl up on the floor now and get it over with. QUICK or 1-MINUTES OATS ARE WHAT YOU WANT. However, you can cheat emotional death in a pinch with old-fashioned oats. Here’s the deal: old-fashioned oats absorb liquid less quickly than one-minute oats. So, if you use them, you’ll initially find that the batter is too runny. You may be tempted to add more oats, but that’d be a
mistake – a
mistake, I tell you. The oat-to-liquid ratio is correct; if you add more oats, you’ll wind up with too dry a cookie once the oats finally get round to absorbing the liquid. The smart thing to do is to cook the mixture
while the oats are in it. This will increase the rate of absorption. On top of that, you simply have to give them time. Do this: once you’ve added the oats, cook for about 5 minutes. Off heat, stir once per minute for about two minutes. Let sit in pan for five to ten minutes (or more). You’re waiting for the mixture to set up: when you spoon the cookies onto the Silpat, they should slowly spread out without becoming completely flat. Although they’ll harden on the outside in just a few minutes, it may take an hour or more before they’re fully set on the inside.
[3] Buttermilk: great in a No-Bake! Increase cooking time slightly.
No-Bake Notes
A picture is worth a thousand words, but that’s not good enough for some of you. No. Apparently you’re the kind of people who watch Jessica Fletcher solve the murder, but still don’t understand it until she explains it to someone verbally in the next scene. These are my who-done-it notes on some of the pictorial entries in Exhibit 1 (which contains a collection of some of the best No-Bake recipes known to man).
Forbidden: This is the most interesting recipe miLam has tested thus far. The results, however, weren’t as interesting as the recipe. We suspect that cutting the oats down to perhaps 2 cups might make all the difference. Click
here for the Forbidden recipe.
No-Bake № 25 is slightly creamier than The Standard. Click
here for the № 25 recipe. miLam tested it using 3 cups of oats. We suspect the strict 1-minute boil may be key.
Nutella: The flavor is clear and nicely balanced with the rest of the No-Bake, more subtly that we would’ve guessed. If you feel like it, you can increase the cocoa to ⅓-cup. The cookie has a creamy quality, even when fully dry. They don’t set up as quickly as The Standard; you can either leave them to cool in the pot for a few minutes before spooning them into cookies, or dump the pot into a 13″ x 9″ nonstick cake pan, and cut them into squares later. Click
here for the Nutella recipe.
The Standard: This is the standard, common version. Delicious if a bit overpowering when warm, but that is nonetheless when miLam’s testers love them most. The finished, cooled cookie is a bit on the grainy side … not in a bad way. This version is the one we grew up with, which is why we consider it to be the standard version. Click
here for The Standard recipe.
Alternatives to No-Bake Therapy
Of course, there are other ways to reduce stress. None of them is as effective as No-Bakes, but each of them deserves consideration: gummi bears, ice cream, pizza, Whoppers (the burger – quite effective, especially when they’re running one of those 2-for-5 deals), Whoppers (the malted milk ball – less effective but more distinguished), sex, alcohol; and finally (or “at last,” you might say), sex and alcohol combined.
There is one other way to beat stress, but you’re probably not going to like it. You could go to the gym. Look what it did for the (apparently non-Catholic) guy in this before and after: 
As you can see, he was positively hideous. I mean, dude, where’s your chiseled fuckin’ abs? And look how stressed out he was: disheveled hair, lost his shirt, can’t be bothered to shave. But after 12 weeks with a personal trainer, backed by an international men’s workout conglomerate, he was transformed into something that looks like one of those plastinated exhibits at Bodies in Motion. He also looks clean-shaven now, but if you look more carefully, you’ll see that all his chest hair has fallen out. No-Bakes would never have done that to you, bro. You should also note that they’ve taken away his friendship bracelet and his belt, just like they do in lockup. Afraid all those chin-ups might make him suicidal? As you can see, his stress levels are lower, but there were some pretty serious side effects. Go to the gym at your own risk.
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Disclaimer: When No-Bakes are used repeatedly, the body adapts to the continued presence of the active ingredients. Larger and larger doses must be taken to produce the same lapsing-into-unconsciousness effect. Usually, this kind of tolerance develops because your problems are actually real, and eating is a stupid way to deal with them. In time, your problems will likely increase as you continue to hide behind that pot of cookies. Your depression will be able to withstand its effects, and no amount of even the most powerful No-Bakes will be
effective against it. Tolerance is not the same as dependence or addiction. Self-medicating with No-Bakes can lead to a strong desire to experience the effect of their magical healing power for its own sake, whether you’re feeling particularly shitty or not. You may experience symptoms of withdrawal when you run out of oatmeal. This kind of addiction is compulsive and overwhelming. To prevent these pitfalls, your cuisinier may try to provide you with No-Bakes only when necessary (not for pissy shit such as, “I missed the bus” or “Goddamnit, the DVR didn’t record Duck Dynasty … again!”) On the other hand, cuisiniers usually give two or more different types of no-bake desserts at the same time for the treatment of certain
serious problems, such as, “Did you hear about that high school teacher who was having an affair with one of her students? Yeah, that’s my wife.” It is very unlikely that any kind of depression would be spontaneously resistant to the kind of sugary-fatty onslaught of No-Bake Cookies combined with, for instance, No-Bake Cheesecake. Very often, this kind of therapy also involves Cool Whip eaten straight from the bucket.
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Image creds: hover over, click on image or on image caption, or use X-ray vision, or highly-developed skills of deduction to reveal, jump to, or jump toward the source.
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I am not sure what to say, but I felt I needed to respond to this post.
Ah, yes. May I suggest 1¼ batches of Choco-Peabites, taken over a two-hour period. That should unclog your fog.
Zgadzam się z Edwardem.
Jestem znudzony w pracy i masz mnie pragnienie nie-piecze. Nie jest to dobre połączenie.
Gdzie pracujesz? I’ll bring you some.