Grown-Up No-Bake Cookies

(Note: These are easily made gluten free IF you have a source for GF oats.)

My entire Legal Aid office played musical offices today in the course of expanding onto a new floor. It was a DIY move aside from desks and file cabinets (it's a DIY kinda place), and a lot of folks had been in their offices for, oh, longer than I've been alive. So needless to say, we were all pretty dusty & tired by the end of the day.

So, tonight, I wanted to bake something to cheer everybody up, get a leg up on befriending the Consumer Unit's new neighbors (the Health & Elder Law Unit), and thank the fulltime volunteers who helped us haul files. Being dusty and tired, though, by "bake" I really mean "stir." Et voila:

Ingredients, group one:
1/2 cup milk
1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

Ingredients, group two:
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp ea: cinnamon & cloves
1/2 cup Nutella
3 1/2 cups quick oats

Bring Group One to boil in a saucepan, whisking all the while. Once boiling, turn heat to medium and boil for 1 minute (still whisking).

Remove from heat. Stir in Group Two (leaving oats for last so everything else is mixed together).

Drop by large teaspoons onto waxed paper & chill. Makes about 2 dozen.