Healthy Cookie Recipe

HEALTHY cookies?!  Yes!  Check out this great recipe from a cooking class I took with food and nutrition expert, Dawn Jackson Blatner, RD.  Her website is an excellent resource for creative, healthy and fairly straightforward recipes.  I get excited when I find new uses for quinoa and flaxseed, and this recipe combines both!  I just made these cookies to take to a winter BBQ tomorrow afternoon and my belly is happy to report that they are delicious!

Peanut Butter Quinoa Cookies


Ingredients

• 1 C quinoa
• 2 C water
• 1/2 C natural chunky peanut butter
• 1/4 C honey
• 1 C rolled oats, pulsed in a food processor to reach flour-like consistency (I used my Magic Bullet's flat blade)
• 1/4 C ground flaxseed
• 1/2 tsp sea salt
• 1/4 C mini dark chocolate chips (or more to taste)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Bring quinoa and water to boil, cover and simmer for 10-20 minutes until water is absorbed.  Remove from heat and let cool.
3. Mix 2 C cooked quinoa with peanut butter and honey.  Reserve remaining ~1C quinoa to eat with salads, etc. later in the day/week.
4. Stir in oats, flaxseeds and salt until well-combined.  Mix in chocolate chips.  (note:  Chocolate chips may melt if quinoa isn't completely cool.  Upside of warmish quinoa = ease of mixing peanut butter).
5. Line 2-3 baking sheets with parchment paper.
6. Use mellon-baller to drop ~ 1 T-sized mounds on baking sheet.
7. Bake cookies for 18-20 minutes, until bottoms/edges are golden
8. Press cookies flat using the bottom of a small drinking class immediately after removing from the oven.  Let cool.

Dawn's recipe yields 36 cookies for nutrition content of 60 calories, 3g fat, 1g fiber, 3g sugar, and 2g protein for each each cookie.  My mellon baller must be bigger than 1 T as my batch yielded 26 cookies with slightly more nutrition goodness in each.  Still healthy and delicious!