Maybe the previous user cooked them too long or made them to small...these are great cookies, and very easy. My batch of 8 jars took about an hour to assemble. Found some cute red fabric at Walmart to glue on top of the jar and put these directions on my laser printer labels: Howdy Partner. Preheat your campfire to 350 and grease up your cornbread pan. You're in for a real sweet treat! Dump this jar into the biggest bowl ya got and mix it around real good. Add a stick of melted butter and whipped up egg. (A teaspoon of vanilla if you got some in the chuck wagon.) Mix with your five cleanest fingers till it looks like cookie dough ought to. Bake for 11-13 minutes. Makes 18 big 'ol cookies, or 2 dozen cowgirl-sized.

This was a really great recipe. I changed the arrangement of the ingredients putting the flour on bottom, then the oatmeal, brown sugar, white sugar, nuts (I used walnuts) and chocolate chips. This kept the flour from spilling into the nuts and chocolate chips. I was unable to use all of the chocolate chips but the cookies still turned out delicious. I used a small spice jar to press all of the layers into the jar. Several mentioned the cookies getting hard. If you will put a half slice of white bread (wheat may work, I've just never tried it) in the container with the cookies and put a lid on them, they will stay soft. The bread gets hard but the cookies stay soft...very weird. Anyway, I tied little inexpensive ornaments and ribbon around them and printed the instructions on decorative labels and put on the jars. TOO CUTE!!! These will make great gifts!!

These are the BEST cookies I've ever had!!! I take them to work for birthdays and other celebrations and everyone always begs for the recipe. Everyone who receives them as a gift begs to get them again next year :-) One change I would make is to switch around the order they tell you to package the ingredients. Layer the chunky items (like chips and nuts) on top of the flour/sugar etc. Otherwise they end up covered up by settling flour and sugar. Use a widemouth jar, and make sure you pack the ingredients TIGHT, otherwise it won't all fit. These cookies are fabulous in every sense of the word!!!

Great idea! I think the next time I'll put the flour, baking sode and salt on the bottom layer to keep it from filtering down through the other layers. Do remember to PACK EACH LAYER or you'll never get it all in the jar! Great gift idea. Thanks

I made these jar mixes to give as Christmas gifts - they are attractive to the eye *and* the cookies taste great! As other reviews stated, I found it a little tough to fit all ingredients into the jar, so what I did was place 1/2 cup chocolate chips in midway (where the recipe says), and fit 1/2 cup (or as much as I could) at the very top. The chips are much simpler to scrunch down than flour! Also, I echo the sentiment regarding low-fat margarine. Although I use it for nearly all of my cooking, I found that when I used it with these cookies they were a bit crunchier and drier than I'd prefer.

This is a great cookie! I used 3/4 cup mini chocolate chips instead of the 1 cup regular size and put them in last (on the top). Everything fit perfectly and the cookie did not lack for chips. I also bought (for $1) a weighted-bottom, cylindrical bud vase to tamp down the ingredients as I placed them in the jar. It worked great. I just have to remember not to get in a hurry with my tamping so I won't knock the glass 'tool' up against the glass jar which might cause it to break. To decorate the jar, I spray painted the lid and the rim blue. I bought some fabric that looked very cowboyish (red with guitars, hats, boots, etc.) and cut it into triangular kerchefs and tied it around the neck of the jar. I used card stock to make postcard sized tags which I put the instructions on as well as a picture of horses from my cardshop software on the other side. I punched a hole in the corner and tied it to the jar with jute (I put this on first and then the kerchef.)

I gave this as gifts to sunday school teachers, ballet instructor and so on. Perfect and got rave reviews. Best to use a wide mouth jar and pack well, I used the bottom of a glass to pack it down. I will use this again next year for gifts, can't get much easier.

These are awesome! I gave out several batches of these as Christmas presents, plus I have made them 4 times now for home and Christmas parties. They were a hit everytime, and delicious! NOTE: I did make a change in the recipe -- I wanted chewy cookies, so I added a 1/4 cup of milk and a whole stick of butter. Also, to reduce the amount of sugar, I use half the amount of sugar and supplement with Splenda (1/4 cup white sugar, 1/4 cup brown sugar, 1 whole cup Splenda). Turned out wonderful every time!

These were fantastic cookies! However, I think next time I will cut the oatmeal in half. I used quick oats which swell up faster and make the taste fuller than reg. oats.

These were the best! I am not fond of nuts, so I substituted butterscotch chips instead. I have been looking for years for a recipe that would produce a cookie that wouldn't go thin after baking...this was it - just right! If you do like nuts, it might be really good as well with the cinnamon chips that Hershey makes instead of the chocolate chips, if you want to try something different. It was a hit to everyone I gave it to and I had to provide the full recipe several times!