Chocolate Macaroons / Haystacks

I saw these the other day over on Suzie the Foodie and knew right away that I had to make some! These were my favorite treats when I was a kid, and I'd never made them before. My mom always called them "Chocolate Macaroons", but most of the kids I knew called them "Haystacks". I knew my boys would love them so I went right to the kitchen and started into it. It went really quickly - less than a half an hour from the point when I decided I was going to make them, until I was done. And that included getting the ingredients out of the cupboard, measuring them, and so forth.

You do not bake these cookies - you just make up the chocolate mixture first in a pot on the stove, then mix in the dry ingredients. I tried a batch reducing the amount of sugar but they did not set up properly, so if anyone has any ideas on how to reduce the sugar without that happening, I'd love to hear it. Typically they have coconut in them, which is how my mom made them, but I wanted to do it without coconut. I've read you just use all rolled oats, but I used flaked barley instead of the coconut.

Ingredients

• 2.5 cups rolled oats
• 1 cup flaked barley (or shredded coconut)
• 2 cups sugar
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/2 cup milk

Just put the butter, milk, sugar and cocoa into a 3 litre pot and turn the burner on high. Mix it about with a whisk until it starts to boil. Once it starts to boil, reduce the heat to half, and keep stirring for 3 minutes.

Then just take the pot off the heat and use a spoon to mix in the oats and whatever else you are using. As seen in this video I had to add a bit more to get the consistency right - maybe another 1/4 to 1/3 cup of barley. It is pretty easy to judge what sort of consistency you need - I show how in the video.

Then just use 2 spoons to spoon it out onto a cookie sheet, and give it 10 minutes to set up.