I recently discovered a new healthy recipe blog whose main focus is on vegan desserts, Chocolate Covered Katie. She has some really innovative ideas and I have been wanting to make some of her desserts for a while now. I finally got around to baking her breakfast cookies, and was very happy with the result. The actual recipe is for an oatmeal raisin cookie, which I love, but I wanted to try something a little different. Instead of raisins, I used cherry-infused dried cranberries and decided to add white chocolate chips into the mix, as well. The result was a super sweet, healthy cookie that you can enjoy for breakfast, a snack, or dessert.
For these white chocolate cherry oatmeal cookies, you’ll need:
1/2 cup rolled oats, instant oats would work just as well
1/2 cup applesauce
1/4 cup nut butter of your choice, I used Better’n Peanut Butter
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1tbsp sweetener such as Stevia
I didn’t measure out the amount of dried fruit or white chocolate chips that I used. It’s up to you how much of these ingredients you want to use.
Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Mix the applesauce and nut butter. Then add in the rest of the ingredients, stirring until they are well-combined. The batter will be very mushy and soft; it won’t look or feel like your average cookie dough, so it’s a little harder to form into balls and place on the cookie sheet. I used an ice cream scooper to scoop out the dough onto the sheet. Bake for about 15 minutes.
I was a little wary about how they would turn out since the batter lacks the standard cookie dough ingredients, but they came out perfectly. I doubt anyone would even know they’re a very healthy version of an oatmeal cookie if you didn’t tell them. The cherry-infused cranberries gave such a kick to the flavor combination in the cookies. They are both tart and sweet at the same time and really pack a punch with each bite.
I highly recommend checking out Chocolate Covered Katie’s blog for good dessert recipes that are low in sugar, fat and geared toward those on special food diets (vegan, gluten-free, etc.). She also lists non-dessert recipes, as well, but her chocolate recipes are what keep you coming back. There are so many more that I can’t wait to try!
