Coconut Castles - cooking recipe

Ingredients

1/2 cup shortening (margarine or butter)
2 cups brown sugar, lightly packed
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
4 eggs, lightly beaten
4 cups coconut
4 cups corn flakes, crushed from 8 cups
1 cup pecans or 1 cup walnuts

Preparation

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Cream the shortening and brown sugar (I often cut the sugar down by 20% or so). Add salt, vanilla and the beaten eggs.
Crush the cornflakes. I always do this by measuring out twice as much uncrushed Corn Flakes and crushing them down to the correct amount. For this large recipe, I have two big four cup measures full of uncrushed Corn Flakes, and then crush them by hand down to two cups each.
(You can make this recipe gluten free by using gluten free corn flakes -- they take a little more force to crush but make the cookies even crunchier and cut down on the sugar).
Add cornflakes, coconut and nuts to the egg and shortening mixture and mix well.
Measure by tablespoons onto prepared baking sheets, either well-greased or, better yet, covered with baking parchment.
Cook until golden brown, about 10 to 14 minutes, depending on your oven.
Let the cookies cool on the pan until they firm up.