Chocolate Peanut Butter No-Bake Cookies

Mmmm... chocolate... I am in dire need of a batch of these delicious no-bake cookies.
The nice thing is, if you don't have all the ingredients, it's easy to replace some of them with others--for example, you can use flaked coconut instead of oatmeal.
You could also add some chopped peanuts to the mix, or add some chocolate chips for that extra chocolately goodness.

Ingredients

• 2 cups sugar
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup cocoa
• 1 pinch of salt
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 cup peanut butter
• 3 cups quick-cooking oatmeal

Directions

1. In a large saucepan, combine sugar, milk, cocoa, salt, and butter and mix well.
2. Bring to a boil and cover saucepan for 30 seconds to allow steam to wash sugar crystals down sides of the pan.
3. Stir mixture and bring it to a boil that can't be stirred down for 1 minute*
4. Remove from heat and stir in peanut butter until smooth.
5. Add oatmeal and mix well.
6. Let the mixture stand for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally to let the oatmeal absorb some of the liquid.
7. Drop mixture by the spoonful onto wax paper or parchment paper.
8. Let cool until you can touch the mixture, then reshape the cookies to make them into balls.**
9. Let cool completely; store at room temperature.

*Make sure that the sugar mixture boils hard for at least 1 minute, otherwise the cookies will be sugary instead of creamy.

**You can also pour the mixture into a 9x9 baking dish and allow it too cool--then cut into pieces.