friday breakfast: oatmeal raisin cookies

For me, breakfast is usually yogurt and fruit.  Or oatmeal.  Or eggs.  Or a smoothie.

But sometimes, breakfast is leftover pizza.  Banana bread with a schmear of peanut butter.  Cookies.

(Everything in moderation.  Including moderation.)

I had to go to the office today instead of my usual work-from-home-Friday.  I know, I know.  My life is so hard.  Breakfast this morning was a very large ice coffee with almond milk (I cannot wait until I can put sweetener in my coffee again!) and a green smoothie to-go.  And, as I was unpacking and reloading my work bag, I found one cookie leftover from a batch that I took that I took to work yesterday.  So it, too, became part of my breakfast.  Yes, a cookie.  But have no fear!  It's a cookie that is so healthy, so full of good-for-you grains and healthy fats that you could eat a few of them for breakfast, and it would fall squarely in the "good" category.  It contains the perfect combination of proteins, carbs, and healthy fats to keep you satisfied all morning long.  And of course, it is gluten-free and added sugar free.

Now, before you drag your mouse to the top right corner of your screen and X out since you've already filed this under "ew gross", hear me out.  I happen to be a stickler for butter and sugar.  I don't go for "healthy desserts" - if I am supposed to be "treating" myself - I want the whole nine yards.  I want buttery, sugary goodness - flavor that is so indulgent, rich, and calorically dense that you have to stop after just a few bites.  I would rather eat one decadent cookie than several "healthy" ones that don't hit the spot.

But, when I was soliciting ideas for next week's entries (I still have a couple more spots!), Brent requested another gluten-free, sugar-free sweet treat.  And of course, there are plenty of them out there - but most contain some sort of natural sweetener (agave, maple syrup, honey, stevia, etc.) that I said from the beginning were off-limits.  And lots of them contain the gluten-free flours that, in general, I am trying to avoid.  (For one, they are expensive, and not worth the investment for someone on a temporary dietary change.  Second, I don't think they taste that good, especially without sugar.)

I checked out a couple of my favorite natural foods blogs, and found a recipe I knew would work on 101 Cookbooks.  Heidi Swanson is a vegetarian, natural foods chef, cookbook author, and blogger.  In fact, she is considered one of the preeminent food bloggers - she's been around for ages and has a well-established site that gets millions of hits per year.  I own one of her cookbooks, Super Natural Everyday, and I am obsessed with it.  I make things out of it all. the. time.  The recipes are simple and delicious, and the photography is brilliant, too.  It is a great resource for someone who is just beginning to cook, as she goes into great detail in regards to methods, technique, and process.  It might be better than How To Cook Everything.

Anyway, getting back to my point - Heidi (I like to think we're on a first-name basis) originally posted these cookies on her website, an amalgam of oats, almonds, coconut, and bananas.  And it just so happened that I had everything on hand except for the mashed bananas, so I was sold.  I stopped by Whole Foods to pick up some overripe bananas, and guess what!  The checkout guy gave me the bananas for free.  Screw Safeway and their "discount" bananas that they have to bring up from the warehouse.  At Whole Foods, they are sitting right there, singles in a hanging basket, and they give them to you for free without even asking.  See, I told you it pays to be nice to grocery store employees.

So I came home, skeptically schlepped together the dough, baked them, and dutifully waited for them to cool.  I noted that they had a great texture (though they do crumble a bit if your flour isn't fine enough), and they were moist (sorry) and sweet (thanks, in no small part, to those overripe bananas).  Because I am just a home cook and not an alchemist, these cookies were not full of that saccharine, buttery goodness that you'd get from a real cookie, but still - they were great.  I took these into a meeting yesterday afternoon and they were promptly devoured by everyone around the table.  My project manager had at least four of them.  And nobody could believe they were "healthy".

I made a couple of adaptations to the original recipe.  First, no chocolate for me, so I used sundried, sugar-free raisins instead.  Second, I did not want to buy almond flour, since I don't forsee myself using it again any time soon.  I noticed that the ingredients in almond flour were simply "blanched almonds" so I just pulsed some sliced almonds in my food processor until they formed a grain-like texture.  (And Heidi told me it was okay, so I felt fine about it.)  To yield 2/3 cup of almond flour, I used about 3/4 cup of sliced almonds.  If you go this route, make sure the final product is fine, like sand.  Some of my almonds remained whole (as you can see in the picture), which was a nice textural component, but it didn't end up combining with the other ingredients as well as the almond meal/flour would have.  And don't process too much, or you will end up with almond butter.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies with Coconut
Adapted, just barely, from 101 Cookbooks
Makes 40 cookies

3 large, ripe bananas, well mashed (about 1 1/2 cups)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup coconut oil, barely warm - so it isn't solid (or alternately, olive oil)
2 cups rolled oats
2/3 cup almond meal (I used a little over 2/3 cup of sliced almonds, no salt added, pulsed to a coarse sand-like texture)
1/3 cup shredded, unsweetened coconut
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon fine grain sea salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/3 cup Thompson raisins

1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees, racks in the top third.
2.  In a large bowl combine the mashed bananas, vanilla extract, and coconut oil. Set aside.
3.  In another bowl whisk together the oats, almond meal, shredded coconut, cinnamon, salt, and baking powder.
4.  Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and stir until combined. Fold in the raisins.  As Heidi says, "the dough is a bit looser than a standard cookie dough, don't worry about it."
5.  Drop dollops of the dough, each about 2 teaspoons in size, an inch apart, onto a parchment-lined baking sheet. As an experiment, I flattened half the drops a little bit, using the back of my spoon.  I found the flatter, more disk-like ones were easier to pick up and eat than the round ones were.   
6.  Bake for 12-14 minutes, or as long as possible without burning the bottoms or browning the coconut.

Have a great weekend!  I am taking it easy and running in the Cherry Blossom 10-Miler on Sunday.  If you have recipes you want me to make for the last week of Lent, please let me know and I will do my best to fit them in!