Thursday, December 23, 2010

Healthy Chewy Cinnamon Chip Oatmeal Cookies

I LOVE oatmeal cookies.  It could be because I feel like I'm making a healthy choice by incorporating oatmeal with a cookie...or I could just love the hearty texture that goes along with them...maybe it's the versatility...who knows!  Whatever the reason, I love them...a little too much!  I had to come up with a healthy, nearly guilt-free recipe, and fast, before I gained more weight than Santa this holiday season!!  So here it is, these cookies definitely taste healthy, because I did everything within my power to make the cookie part as shameless as possible, so I could feel okay about adding plenty of cinnamon chips in them!  Don't worry, they still taste great!  As a matter of fact, I tested them out on my two daughters, just to be sure they were "taste worthy"...after the first bite, I told them they needed to eat dinner before having more...minutes later, my youngest, Lucianna, tentatively walks up to me, mouth PACKED full of cookie, which she had nabbed behind my back, and quickly shoved as much into her mouth as possible (3/4 of the whole cookie!)  So, are they good?  I'd say ask Lucianna, but her mouth is too full to answer you!

Preheat oven to 375

-Cream together:

3/4 c. coconut oil
3/4 c. applesauce (we've replaced half of the oil with applesauce, you know, to keep it figure friendly!!)
1 c. agave (the recipe is a double batch, yet I used only half the amount of sweetener you'd normally use)
3 "eggs" (3 eggs worth of egg replacer...also saving you 27g of fat by using an egg replacement)

-Add:

1/4 c. unsweetened almond milk
3 t. vanilla
3/4 c. oat bran
1/4 c. whole flax seeds, ground in a coffee grinder
4 c. old fashioned oats
2 t. baking soda

-Mix until well incorporated.

-Fold in:

1 c. Herseys Cinnamon Chips (Never had them?  You are missing out on something AMAZING!)

-Bake for 7-9 minutes and cool on the baking sheet for a few minutes until they set up enough to transfer to a cooling rack.

-Note:  This is a double batch of cookies...what I like to do is split the dough up and make a variety of oatmeal cookies...here are some mix in ideas:

raisens
Andes Mint pieces
chocolate chips
butterscotch chips
walnut pieces
white chocolate chips
white chocolate chips and dried cranberries

-Just to name a few!!  Get creative and enjoy, knowing that you're getting a cookie that's lower in fat and sugars, as well as wheat free!!

3 comments:

  1. Oat bran?... you mean the cereal?
    Or is this something different - like in the baking aisle? Sounds like it could be something of Bob's Red Mill brand.
    I have ground flax seed already on hand - so can I just use those instead of going through the exercise of getting whole flax seeds and grinding them.

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  2. yes, you can use your pre-ground flax seed...but I just don't know what the measurement will be (it grinds up differently). Oat bran you MIGHT be able to find in some Bob's Red Mill stuff...but the hot cereal oat bran will work just fine...just make sure that's the only ingredient in it! If worst comes to worse, you can just stick old fashioned oats in your food processor and turn them into a flour, instead of using oat bran. Good luck!

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  3. These taste good.
    I made a double batch of this recipe... and accidently used almost double the vanilla... but they turned out wonderful!
    I prefer bars to cookies, so I used 2 jellyroll pans and baked the bars at 350 for about 10 minutes.
    I plan on freezing half of them. I definately will be making these again... they're easy to make.
    Bridget

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