Oatmeal Cookies

The idea for this recipe was born when I accidentally made a batch of granola much too thick. Instead of granola I had made a thick chewy cookie-like mixture that was not granola or cookie. Although tasty, I decided to give actual oatmeal cookies a try. You can play around with the dried fruit/nuts you put in here to find the best combination for you. I did the following:

You'll Need

DRY WET

2 cups of rolled oats
1/2 cup of blended rolled oats
1 TSP baking powder
few pinches of salt (~1/8 TSP)
1 TSP cinnamon
*optional: few pinches of cardamom
1/4 TSP nutmeg
3/4 cup chopped almonds
~1/4 cup raisins

1 very large & ripe mashed banana
2 TSP vanilla extract
2 TBSP all natural peanut butter
1 cup almond milk
1/8 cup coconut oil
1/2 cup maple syrup

Start by mushing the banana- you can use 1 large or 1.5 small (2 small is good too). Combine this in a pot with the rest of the wet ingredients on medium heat. Once it starts bubbling, stir the mixture, making sure everything is well blended. Let it thicken a little, then take it off the heat.

I used only 1/2 cup of maple syrup but together with the raisins and the banana it was perfectly sweet for me. For someone who really likes sweets however this won't be sweet enough at all- use 2/3 or even 1 cup of maple syrup. Alternatively, you can use 1/2 cup of cane sugar & the rest syrup or all sugar. If you don't use maple syrup at all the cookie will be denser so you can just compensate by adding more almond milk.

Preheat the oven to 350ºF.

Chop the almonds. You can simply put them in the blender if you're lazy but I didn't want powdery almond dust in the cookies- I like the crunch of sizeable nut pieces in a cookie. So I went through the longer process of chopping them by hand. I don't know if its just me but every time I do this the nuts just fly everywhere haha. Another method is keeping them wrapped in a cloth and crushing them from outside the cloth but its kind of fun to block the flying almonds as you're chopping them anyway :P

Since everyone has a different degree of raisin love the amount here is totally up to you. I like them a little but something loaded with raisins is not my cup of tea so I only put 1/4 of a cup.

Combine the dry ingredients in a separate bowl. Two cups of oats will be used just as they are and the other half will go in the blender. You can blend them until they have been ground into a flour (this only takes a few seconds) and add this to the mix.

As you may have already observed, these measurements are not set in stone, play around with the amounts to see what you like best… its just a guide :)

You can always change up the mix as you're making it -tasting as you go along to see what needs fixing. A good portion of the batter never makes it into the oven for this reason hehe

Line a baking tray with parchment paper & grease it with coconut oil. Once the oven has preheated you can drop the cookie mix in large spoonfuls- try to get them all the same size so they all cook the same. You can make a bunch of smaller cookies or less larger cookies- the smaller ones will cook faster.

As you can see I only managed to scramble out 13 large cookies but with this mix amount but if you are not tasting it as you go (which is nearly impossible if you are improvising a recipe) it should come out to ~16 smaller cookies or so.

Bake them in the oven for 20 minutes, then flip the pan around (so the ones in the front get a chance to cook at the back) and continue baking for 10 more minutes.

At this point your whole kitchen should smell like cookies (if not your whole house!) And the edges around the cookies should be brown. When you take them out at this point they will be rather soft, however they will get chewier and more dense as they cool.

Thats it! These are good the next day although they won't be as soft. Enjoy warm with a cold glass of almond milk.