No eggs? 'Poor man's cookies' are the perfect egg-free snack.

The recipes I followed called for:

• 3/4 cup shortening
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoons salt
• 2 cups rolled oats

One of the items I needed to purchase for this recipe was the shortening.

Full disclosure: I didn't know what shortening was, exactly, until I baked these cookies. I learned it's essentially a butter substitute that's all fat and considerably more shelf-stable than butter.

I used Crisco All-Vegetable Shortening, which was $5.76 for a 16-ounce can at Fairway. For this recipe, I used ¾ cup.

I received a KitchenAid hand mixer, which retails at $79.99, as a holiday present a few years ago — it's the best hand mixer I've tried, and I'm thankful for it any time I bake.

That means the flour, baking soda, and salt.

As you can see, it began to splatter a bit against my fridge. I probably could've poured the water in slower or reduced the mixer's speed.

Though it wasn't in the recipe, I decided to add a teaspoon of cinnamon to give the cookies a little extra flavor.

I love cinnamon and brown sugar in my oatmeal, so I figured that adding cinnamon to oatmeal cookies couldn't hurt.

Rolled oats were the other ingredient I had to purchase. I bought a 32-ounce bag of Bob's Red Mill oats from Fairway for $6.65.

In the process, I almost entirely covered my hands in dough. Since there's no eggs in this, I was safe to take a little taste of the unbaked dough, and was pleased.

I was expecting this to be on the dryer side, since there was no eggs or butter to add moisture, but the water, shortening, and creamed sugar made this similar to any other cookie dough I've made in the past.

I had already preheated the oven to 350 degrees.

As you can see, the cookies spread out quite quickly, and quite widely. The sheet on the bottom combined almost instantly to become one giant mega-cookie.

The top tray came out perfectly — the cookies were golden-brown around the edges, and they were touching, but not congealed together.

The bottom tray, on the other hand, was a lost cause. They were burnt around the edges, brittle, and resembled oatmeal bark more than oatmeal cookies.

This was one of the best oatmeal cookies I've had in a long time.

The cookies were neither too chewy nor dry, and they were just the right amount of sweet. I'm glad I added the cinnamon, as that gave it a subtle burst of flavor, but I'm sure these would've been fine without them. I didn't miss eggs (or any other dairy products) at all.

Next time, I'll be using smaller scoops of dough and sticking to the top rack of my oven. I might experiment by adding chocolate chips, but there aren't any other changes I'd make — and now that I have the ingredients, "poor man's cookies" will be a quick and cheap snack to bake.