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.  -  22 Dec 2003  (Review from Allrecipes USA and Canada)

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!!  -  30 Nov 2003  (Review from Allrecipes USA and Canada)

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!!!  -  21 Nov 2002  (Review from Allrecipes USA and Canada)