Chunky Apple Oat Cookies
So, as I had mentioned on social media, I randomly made these cookies last week and they turned out to be my favorite cookies that I have ever made. Seriously. This is the beauty of cooking or baking; you can eyeball measurements, throw this or that in there, and then BAM! It’s super delicious and you’re not even sure what you did (or it turns out a total disaster, which has also happened to more times than the former option, but not in this case).
My favorite thing about oatmeal cookies is that they fill you up, they’re healthy, and nutrient dense. They’re also portable and you don’t have to heat anything up, carry a bowl, or add milk as you would with oatmeal. These cookies are basically “oatmeal to go”. You can eat them at work for your breakfast, on the way, or as a great snack during the middle of the day.
While I loooove my Chewy Banana Chocolate Chip Cookies that are also made with oats, these oatmeal cookies are more thicker, nuttier, and less sweet. In comparison, these cookies are hearty, nutty, and very almond/ bran tasting (and I actually very much enjoy bran muffins, but I may be in the minority here?).
I recently found a recipe that was verbatim called “actually healthy bran muffins”, which still used orange juice, buttermilk, molasses, and processed cereal…. so not really that healthy at all. I guess it all depends on what you define as healthy. To me, healthy means as little processed ingredients and added sugars as possible; the more natural, the better. Maybe I should have called these “actually healthy oatmeal cookies, but actually healthy”.
I hope you enjoy. :)
Ingredients:
2 very ripe large organic bananas (literally, the blacker on the outside the better; they are sweeter and easier to mash up. Put them in the fridge when they get really black to help with gnats).
1 cup of gluten free organic quick cooking rolled oats
(Bob’s red mill is the only brand I really buy- I could go on forever about how important it is to buy organic to not have as many pesticides on your body, but i’ll spare you for now. Just buy organic; it’s not that much more expensive and you are not ingesting as many toxins that effect so much of our health)
4 tbsps organic ground flax meal (also Bob’s red mill)
2 heaping tsps organic ground cinnamon
1 tbsps organic honey (preferably local)
1 tbsp organic almond butter (the runnier the better- and without palm oil)
1 egg
(preferably from someone you know who has eggs where the chickens aren’t pumped with antibiotics and treated fairly…)
1/2 cup of chopped nuts mixed together (I used pumpkin seeds, chopped almonds, and chopped cashews, but really any nuts will do)
1/4 cup almond butter for topping (again, the runnier the better)
1/2 small organic red apple chopped into very tiny chunks (very small)
Recipe:
Set oven to 350*F
Mash bananas until very much like applesauce.
Add in oats, flax, cinnamon, honey, almond butter, and mix as well as you can (it will be pretty thick)
Add in egg, nuts, and apple. I find that adding in the egg with the chunky ingredients helps to bind it all together.
Put the aluminum foil on your baking sheet and roll the cookies in your hand, mashing them together. Flatten the cookies out into 2.5 inch x 2.5 inch THICK circle cookies, flattening the top. I find it helpful if you wash your hands off between every 2-3 cookies so that your hands don’t get too sticky.
Bake 23-25 minutes until lightly browned.
WAIT to take off the cookies from the aluminum foil for about 20 minutes so that it comes off in one piece.
if eating the next day or storing: place in the fridge overnight. If you have a microwave at work, these are good heated for about 20 seconds.
if you’re going to eat them right after, take almond butter and heat it for ~30 seconds, then drizzle it on top with a spoon. SO GOOD.
These can stay good in the fridge for about 2 days. You can mason jar them and grab them on your way out. That is MY kind of “fast food”. :)
