Giant Breakfast Cookies

Whew – we’ve hit the dogs days of summer here in Oklahoma. With “low” 100’s in the forecast, 2-a-day football practices filling our weeks and the official 2018-19 school supply lists taped to the fridge – ‘dog days’ seems to hit the nail on the head.

I love the freedom of summer, the longer days and impromptu binge movie watching and Catan tournaments. I’d love it if summer and all it’s lazy mornings and late nights lasted forever. But, this is my eleventh summer with school-aged kids, so I know when we get to this point in the year, school will begin in a literal blink. Boo.Hoo.

And with that reality looming in the back of my mind, I’ve set out to solve one of my biggest “mom struggles” :: SCHOOL MORNING BREAKFAST (I hope you hear the inferred “da da daaaaaaaa” music in the background.)

criteria for school morning breakfasts :

Here’s the criteria –

fast
healthy
sustaining
easy
adaptable to kid’s preferences
liked by all

And – although it’s early, I believe each requirement has been fulfilled!

Here’s what’s packed inside these giant breakfast cookies:

ingredients :

ground oat flour
dried fruit
walnuts
Belgian chocolate
collagen peptides (for muscle recovery and joint health – remembering those 2-a-days!)
coconut oil
cinnamon
nutmeg
Himalayan sea salt
(along with butter, vanilla, sugar + flour)

instructions :

To make these cookies, begin by combining the sugars, fats and spices in the bowl of a stand mixer. After whipping these ingredients together, add eggs & vanilla.

A tip for making your own oat flour :: pulse old-fashioned oats in a food processor until the oats are ground into a fine powder.

Add oat flour, flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder & collagen powder to the creamed mixture. Mix to combine, stopping to scrape the sides and continuing to mix until evenly incorporated.

Then stir in the dried fruit, nuts & shaved chocolate.

Bake cookies for 14 minutes or until lightly golden around the edges.

breakfast cookie inspiration :

I came up with the recipe by starting with a highly rated cookie on one of my favorite baking websites. I reduced the sugar by 25%, subbed half the fat for coconut oil, added dried fruit and walnuts and snuck in 4 scoops of collagen powder. NO ONE noticed. For real. Yes there’s sugar and flour and butter – but there’s also some really heart healthy fiber, good sources of fat and other nutrients found in nuts, fruit and sea salt.

And I don’t know what your school mornings look like, but around my house those things don’t usually get eaten (happily) at 6:30 am. Until today. (yippee)