If you walk into any Korean kitchen you will notice quickly that there isn’t an oven.  I would consider an oven to be a staple in American homes, but Koreans lean more towards  soups and stir-fry instead of cookies and casseroles.

This also explains why butter is not cheap, I got a tiny box of it for about six dollars.  I’d like to think they are deprived of the wonderful baked goods made better by butter, but Koreans also get smaller waist lines.

I had a hankering for cookies and I needed to bring some food for a party so I went with the stove-top option.  You just boil the butter, sugar, and milk for one minute and then turn off the heat and add the rest of the ingredients.  Drop spoonfuls onto wax paper and put them in the refrigerator until they cool.

3 cups of sugar

3/4 cup of butter

3/4 cup of milk

1 1/2 cup of peanut butter

4 1/2 cups of quick cooking oats

1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract

Vanilla extract is also not a common item found in Korean grocery stores, so I used cinnamon to give it an extra kick of sweetness, but mainly because I love cinnamon.

This recipe makes 4 dozen cookies.  I took half of the cookies to a party and the other half to my country school.  And of course I needed to try a few for quality control.