Most important meal of the day, right?  I love oatmeal in the morning, but time to prep, wait for it to cool down to an edible temperature, cleaning of messy bowls, and so on makes it impractical when I would rather stay in bed for an extra 15 minutes.  Enter the breakfast cookie.

My objective was to put something together with a minimal amount of processed sugar, plenty of fiber, freezable, and tasty! I took a basic oatmeal cookie recipe and modified it.  I’ve experimented with different spices, oatmeals, and dried fruit. The amounts listed below are rough estimates, and I tweak the ingredients each time.

Ingredients:

1 cup flour
1/2 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
2 very ripe bananas
1/2 cup nut butter (I prefer hazelnut, but almond is good, too! Peanut works as well.)
1/2 cup applesauce
1/2 cup dried fruit
2 eggs
1 T vanilla
1 1/2 cups Scottish oatmeal
orange zest
LOTS of cinnamon
honey to taste (if you want the cookies sweeter)

Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees F. Mix flour, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt in a small bowl.  Set aside. In a large mixing bowl, use hand mixer to cream together vanilla, bananas, nut butter, orange zest, and honey if desired.  Add eggs and mix well.   Still in flour mixture, then add oatmeal and dried fruit.  When it is a gloriously mushy mess, drop large spoonfuls of dough on the cookie sheet.  I can usually get 4 or 5 to a sheet, and the recipe makes 8 – 10 depending on how large you make the cookies.

Bake for 10 – 15 minutes. Once they have cooled, I leave enough for the week in the fridge for the week and freeze the rest.  Thaw in the fridge.

Enjoy!