Healthy Breakfast Cookies

How are you guys doing?

It’s fall here in Vancouver, and that means buckets of rain. I mean buckets. As I type this, there is a live rainfall warning–they are predicting 100mm in the next 24 hours.

I’m a summer girl. If I could live on the beach in my flip-flops all year, I’d be perfectly happy. When it starts to rain, I just want to hibernate and drink tea. And maybe some red wine. And eat comfort food.

The problem with eating comfort food and drinking wine and not going outside is that you gain winter layers. And I’m not talking about cozy sweaters!

So, in an attempt to both eat comfort food and remain relatively healthy, I present to you, today’s recipe.

It’s brimming with healthy fats, including Omega-3 fatty acids, which have been shown to help with depression (so when it rains for 3 months straight, let cookies be your medicine! Not really. Okay, maybe a little). There’s not a ton of sugar, lots of fibre, and dried fruit.

This recipe was a winner from last year’s Wellness Show. I tasted them back then, and I knew why they were a winner! I only just made them for myself for the first time, though.

Feel free to sub out the dried cranberries and apricots for your own dried fruit mix. I use gojis, dates, and some dried apples I’d just made in my new dehydrator (MUCH more about that later).

These would be a great after school snack for the kids, or as a grab-and-go breakfast on the run.

Cookies for breakfast?? Heck, yeah! Sign me up!

Healthy Breakfast Cookies

(recipe by by Lisa Schmidt)

Ingredients: 

• 1 cup Alligga flaxseed oil (available at Nesters Market)
• 3/4 cup honey
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 cup whole wheat flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 3 cups rolled oats
• 1/2 cup chopped dried apricots
• 1/2 cup dried cranberries
• 1 cup flaked coconut
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans or almonds

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. Cream oil, honey and sugar.
3. Beat in the eggs and vanilla.
4. Mix in flour with the baking power, soda and salt and add to creamed mixture.
5. Fold in the oats, dried fruit, nuts and coconut and mix well.
6. Drop with an ice-cream scoop onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.
7. Bake at 350 degrees until slightly browned (12 minutes or so – turn cookie sheet around ½ way during cooking.)