No-Bake Nutter Butter Nutella Pie

Another Nutella recipe! For Katie's last night here, I made her this pie. As I've said before, a lot of my friends like Nutella and this pie was a hit, not to mention super-easy. According to my friend John, because of this pie I now have permission to make whatever I want, whenever I want and serve it to him because he has complete faith in my cooking ability. All thanks to this gorgeous and oh-so-easy dessert. So! Want to impress your friends? Make this pie!

It is pretty decadent, between the whipping cream and cream cheese, not to mention that chocolatey goodness that is Nutella. Definitely worth every bite, though! And the nutter butter crumb crust? Genius. Also, don't be shy with the Nutella. You can add more if you want; it will enhance the flavor nicely.

The original recipe calls for the addition of Nutella ganache, an extra decadent drizzle on top of the pie. We left it out, as the pie is rich enough. But if you want to try it, check out the original recipe! 

 

No-Bake Nutter Butter Nutella Pie

Source:Eat Live Run

Makes 1 pie

Ingredients

• 12 nutter butter cookies
• 1/4 c. butter
• 16 oz cream cheese
• 3/4 c. granulated sugar
• 1 t. vanilla
• 1/2 c. heavy cream
• 1/2 c. Nutella

Recipe

Place the cookies in a food processor and grind them until very fine. Stir into the melted butter.
Spray a 9" pie pan with cooking spray and press the nutter butter crumb crust into the bottom and up the sides of the pan. Refrigerate while you make the filling.
Using a mixer, whip the cream cheese and sugar together until creamy.
Stir vanilla and Nutella into the cream cheese, scrape down the sides of the bowl, and mix until combined.
Add heavy cream, stir until combined, then whip for 3 minutes to thicken the filling.
Pour the filling into your pie pan, smooth the top, and refrigerate for at least 2 hours for the filling to firm up.

Thanks for reading and happy cooking!

Roasted Pecan Butter

Here's a quick post for today. :)

This concoction is so tasty! It's so nutty and has just enough sweetness...I can't say enough about how delicious roasted pecan butter is. You can put it on toast! Or biscuits! Or, I don't know, Oatmeal Pecan Pancakes! If you want, you can store it in a jar in your fridge and it will keep for a week or two. But why do that?! It's much tastier all at once and fresh out of the food processor. Enjoy. :)

This recipe makes chunky pecan butter - if you want the pecans to be really finely ground, grind them up in a food processor by themselves and then add the other ingredients.

Roasted Pecan Butter

Adapted from:Royalty Pecan Farms

Makes about 1 cup butter

Ingredients

• 1/2 c. chopped pecans
• 1 stick butter
• 2 T. light brown sugar
• 1 t. vanilla

Before you start:Preheat your oven to 325 degrees and set your butter out at room temperature

Recipe

Put pecans on a baking sheet and bake for 10-15 minutes. Pecans should be fragrant and lightly browned. Be warned - they burn quickly so keep an eye on them.


Cool the pecans to room temperature. Add to food processor, along with butter, brown sugar, and vanilla. Pulse until smooth. Serve immediately, or put in a sealed jar and keep in the fridge for up to a week.

Thanks for reading and happy cooking!

Blueberry Muffins

What a great first week down at A&M it's been! My friend Katie has been here for a few days, catching up with everyone before she heads off to Notre Dame for an REU (a summer research program). She always thinks of fun stuff to do; this week, we ended up going blueberry picking! There's a little farm about 45 minutes away run by a family, and they let people come and pick berries. It's a great deal - just a few dollars a pound - and the family gets all of the excess blueberries off their hands!

Interesting fact about blueberries: blueberries start out white! As they ripen, they turn yellow, then pink, and then darken to that gorgeous navy blue. It was really cool to see them all on the vine in so many colors. We got over 2 and a half pounds of berries in an hour...more than enough to have a breakfast feast! The night we picked them, my sister and I whipped up these muffins, along with the pecan pancakes - an awesome breakfast dinner!

My sister made these muffins, so I don't have too many pictures of the cooking process. But they're delicious! Note that they're still really pale once you take them out of the oven, so you have to use a toothpick to test for doneness. 

 

Blueberry Muffins

Source:The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook

Makes 12-16 muffins

Ingredients

• 2 1/4 c. flour
• 1 3/4 c. sugar
• 1 t. salt
• 1 1/2 t. baking powder
• 1/2 t. baking soda
• 1 1/2 c. buttermilk (or just under 1 1/2 c. milk with 1 1/2 T. vinegar)
• 1 egg
• 1/2 t. vanilla
• 5 T. butter
• 1 pt. (2 cups) blueberries

Before you start:Preheat oven to 325 degrees and melt your butter. Line a muffin pan with paper muffin cups.

Recipe

Combine flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, and baking soda in a bowl. Beat with a mixer to combine.
In a small bowl, mix the buttermilk, egg, and vanilla. Slowly pour this into the flour mixture and beat until just combined.
Pour in the melted butter and beat on low speed to combine, then beat the dough at medium speed until it is smooth.
Fold in the blueberries with a wooden spoon until evenly distributed.
Fill each muffin cup 2/3 full, and bake for 20-25 minutes. Muffins are done when they start to brown and when an inserted toothpick comes back clean.

Thanks for reading and happy cooking!

Oatmeal Pecan Pancakes

Yesterday, some friends and I went out blueberry picking! (More on that tomorrow). There's a small blueberry farm out in Caldwell, TX, about 45 minutes from where we live. So, we drove out there to do some picking. On the way, though, we saw a huge sign for a pecan farm! I looked up the pecan farm online, and they had a recipe posted for pecan pancakes with toasted pecan butter. I was hooked! So, on our way back we stopped by the farm and bought some pecans. Delicious!

My family LOVES pecans. When I was little, we would go to my great-aunt's house every year to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas. She had enormous pecan trees in her backyard, so whenever we were bored we would go out and pick pecans. We got free pecans every year because my great-aunt couldn't possibly use them all, so we were spoiled rotten! I remember pecan pies and lots and lots of pecan pancakes for years!

Which brings me to this recipe. These pancakes are a lot more decadent than the pancakes my dad would make - they're really thick, fluffy, and very filling. The oats in the batter give it a nice density, and they're so good that you don't even need syrup, if you don't want to use it. (Just pecan butter - that recipe will come online soon, too!) The original recipe uses 1/4 c. of batter at a time, but I ended up doubling it because I like big, thick pancakes. :)

  

Oatmeal Pecan Pancakes

Source:Royalty Pecan Farms

Serves 4-5

Ingredients

• 3/4 c. oats
• 1 1/2 c. milk
• 2 eggs
• 1/4 c. butter
• 1 1/4 c. flour
• 2 T. sugar
• 1 T. baking powder
• 1 t. salt
• 1/2 c. pecans, chopped
• Cooking spray

Before you start:Beat your eggs in a small bowl and melt your butter. Heat up a pan/griddle to medium low heat, and spray it with cooking spray.

Recipe

Combine oats and milk in small bowl, and let sit for 5 minutes.
Add the melted butter and eggs to the oat mixture and stir to combine.
Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Add liquid ingredients and pecans and stir until just blended.
Pour 1/2 c. batter into the hot pan and spread out evenly with a spoon. Allow to cook for 4-5 minutes, and then flip - the top should be golden brown and firm. Cook the other side for 4-5 minutes until golden brown.
Repeat for each pancake. For best results, spray your pan with cooking spray after every other pancake.

Thanks for reading and happy cooking!

Mixed-Berry Granola

Hello! I hope you all are well. I have settled into College Station for a while, and because my friend Katie is here for the weekend I've been eating horribly. I'm not complaining much, mind you - eating out is delightful, as is all of the stuff I've been devouring for the past few days. However, my whole plan of getting fit has taken a bit of a step backward. So, I thought I'd try and right myself with a healthy recipe - granola!

I like granola! There are 2 problems with buying it in grocery stores, though. Premade mixes tend to be less than healthful, and expensive. So, I figured I'd try to make my own. It helps that my local grocery store has a really awesome selection of grains and dried fruits and other things...it has a whole wall of different items you can buy in bulk. I saw lots of things I wanted to try later, but for now I'm sticking with the ingredients in this recipe.

I have found that I really like dried fruit! I don't like raisins, but a friend introduced me to cranberries when I was little and I loved them. I also really like dried mangoes, which is funny because I don't like fresh mango very much at all. Dried blueberries are also excellent! Dried fruits are good because they have concentrated flavor and keep for quite a while. 

This recipe comes from a rather new purchase of mine...a book called "Healthy Cooking For Two". It will be nice to not have to size every recipe down for once, and after flipping through the book I determined that there were a lot of tasty-looking treats. So, this will be my test drive. I really liked this granola. :)

The original recipe called for dried apricots, but I decided to sub in dried berries - blueberries, strawberries, and cranberries. You can include whatever you want - just be sure to cut the fruit into fairly small pieces. This granola works as a snack or as breakfast, with milk or yogurt.  

Mixed-Berry Granola

Adapted from:Healthy Cooking For Two

Makes 4 cups

Ingredients

• 1 c. dried fruit
• 3 1/2 c. rolled oats
• 6 T. sliced almonds (or 1/4 c. + 2 T.)
• 1/4 c. wheat germ
• 2 T. cinnamon sugar
• 1 T. canola oil
• 3 T. honey

Before you start:Preheat your oven to 325 degrees and cut your dried fruit into small pieces

Recipe

In a large bowl, combine oats, almonds, wheat germ, and cinnamon sugar. Mix well.
Pour the oil into a bowl and add the honey (tip: if you use the same tablespoon, the residual oil will make the honey easy to pour!). Mix well.
Pour the honey mixture over the oats and stir to coat the oats evenly.
Spread the granola into a 9x9" pan and bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until golden brown. Every ten minutes, use a spatula to break up the clumps that form and stir the granola around.
Cool granola to room temperature, then add the fruit. You can store the granola in a tightly-covered container for up to a month.

Thanks for reading and happy cooking!

Nutella Cupcakes

Ah, Nutella! It's one of those random grocery store items that people either really like or really don't. I'm personally a fan of chocolate-hazelnut spread, particularly as part of a peanut butter (and nutella) sandwich or with pretzels. Seriously, try them! Texas pretzels work the best - they're shaped like cowboy boots. :D

 My love affair for Nutella began with my friend Katie, when I was a freshman in college. She had been to Italy the previous summer, and loved Nutella. Along with Eggo waffles and boxed macaroni and cheese, it was one of her main food groups. So, naturally, I had to try some! It was delicious - chocolatey without being overwhelmingly rich.

Fast-forward to last summer! Katie and I and our new friend Eric were studying for classes we were taking over the summer - our go-to snack was Nutella and Texas Pretzels (see above!). It was a very silly summer, and I spent many an afternoon bonding with them over Nutella.

This recipe is dedicated to Katie and Eric, who are awesome people as well as fellow Nutella-lovers. I was going to make these cupcakes in honor of World Nutella Day (which is February 5th!) but I didn't really have the facilities necessary for them. Alas...there's always next year!

The original recipe I found called these cupcakes "self-frosting" because of the nice Nutella topping. They are pretty sweet without adding anything to them! However, don't let that stop you. The first time I made these, I wanted to ice them but I was short on time so I just blended some canned vanilla frosting with nutella. It was delicious! Icing definitely adds to these cupcakes if you want a little more sweetness.

Also note that the batter will be really thick when you put it into the cupcake liners. That's good! It will keep the dense Nutella from sinking to the bottom. Using an ice-cream scoop is the best way to ensure you fill the muffin tin to the right level. :)
 

Nutella Cupcakes

Source:Home Cooking Rocks

Makes 9-12 cupcakes

Ingredients

• Roughly 2/3 c. stick butter
• 3/4 c. granulated sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 t. vanilla extract
• 1 and 3/4 c. flour
• 1/4 t. flour
• 2 t. baking powder
• 9-12 heaping t. Nutella (one for each cupcake!)

Before you start:Make sure your eggs, butter, and Nutella are at room temperature. Preheat your oven to 325 degrees F.

Recipe

Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium-sized bowl.
Combine the butter and sugar in a large bowl. Using a mixer, beat it until smooth and creamy.
Add eggs one at a time, beating after each addition.
Add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients and mix until the batter is smooth.
Line your muffin pan with cupcake liners, and spoon the batter so that the liners are roughly 3/4 full. Ice cream scoops work best here!
Dollop a heaping teaspoon of Nutella on the top of each cupcake. Using a toothpick, swirl the Nutella with the batter so that some of the batter shows on top of the cupcake and the Nutella is distributed.
Bake your cupcakes for 20 minutes. 

Thanks for reading and happy cooking!

Mushroom Quesadilla

I love quesadillas! They are so tasty and you can make them in no time, using whatever ingredients you want. However, not everyone can make tasty quesadillas, I'm sorry to say. One of my neighborhood friends when I was younger insisted that you only need 2 tortillas, cheese, and a microwave. I'm sorry, but there's something about that crispy outside of restaurant quesadillas that is really necessary for good quesadillas.

To do that, you need a saucepan! And butter. Butter the outsides of your tortillas and they'll crisp up, like any restaurant variety. Mmmm. If you have any leftover ground beef or pulled pork, you can add this to the recipe, along with onions or bell peppers or whatever strikes your fancy. :) I went with simple today because I LOVE mushrooms. If you're going to use other veggies, be sure to cook them a little first, as they won't cook much inside the quesadilla. If you want to serve 2 people, just use 2 big tortillas, double the ingredients that go inside, and serve it in halves.

Mushroom Quesadilla

Serves 1

Ingredients

• 2 small flour tortillas
• 2-3 mushrooms, thinly sliced
• 1 tsp. garlic salt
• margarine
• 1/2 c. shredded cheese (I usually use the mixed "Mexican" cheese you can get from the store)

Before you start:heat your pan up to medium heat on your stove.

Recipe

Melt about a tablespoon of margarine in a pan, then add mushrooms and garlic salt. Allow mushrooms to cook about 4 minutes per side, until they're browned and soft. Set mushrooms aside.


Butter both tortillas with margarine. Place one tortilla butter-side down in the pan, arrange the mushrooms on the tortilla, and top with cheese. Make sure to spread it evenly over the tortilla, leaving a little space around the edge of the tortilla for the cheese to melt and spread out. Top with the second tortilla, with the butter side facing out.


Cook for 5 minutes, or until cheese has started to melt and the bottom tortilla is golden-brown. Flip and cook the other side for 5 minutes, or until it is golden-brown. Remove from pan, cut into wedges and serve.

Thanks for reading and happy cooking!

Honey-Soy Chicken Stir-Fry

Hi! I hope you all are well. :)

Today, I decided to experiment with stir-frying. The nice thing about mixing sauces from scratch is that they're really forgiving. If you add too much of something, just add a bit more of something else to even things out. If you don't have all of these ingredients, don't worry! Just substitute with whatever you have and as long as it tastes good, it should be fine! I like mine pretty sweet (of course!), but I realize not everyone would.

Any vegetables you want to add can be included here, too. Green or red peppers would work well, and you can add carrots and replace the yellow onion with green onions if you so desire. Up to you!

I've decided I like stir-frying. It's pretty straight-forward and has delicious results! Plus, if you use low-sodium soy sauce and low-fat low-sodium chicken stock, you have a satisfying, healthy meal.

Chicken Stir-Fry

Serves 2

Ingredients

• 2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• Canola oil
• Salt and pepper
• 3 cloves garlic
• 6-8 white button mushrooms
• 5-7 stalks asparagus
• 1/2 broccoli crown
• 1 small yellow onion
• 1/2 c. chicken stock
• 1/4 c. soy sauce
• 1/4 c. honey
• 1 t. lemon juice
• 2 T. brown sugar
• 2 T. mirin (rice wine vinegar)
• 2 t. powdered ginger
• 1 T. garlic salt
• 1 T. flour (optional)
• 2 c. cooked rice

Before you start: cube your chicken breasts and chop your garlic

Recipe

Heat oil in a pan over medium heat and add garlic - let it cook for a few minutes until fragrant. Add chicken and salt and pepper and cook until done - chicken pieces should be lightly browned.


Quarter your mushrooms and chop your onion into small pieces. Heat up some canola oil in a large wok over medium heat and add mushrooms and onions - cook for about 5 minutes.


Cut up your broccoli into small pieces and your asparagus spears into 1" lengths. Add to the cooking mushrooms and onions, along with some garlic salt. Cook for about 3 minutes.


In a small bowl, mix the chicken stock, soy sauce, mirin, honey, ginger, brown sugar, and lemon juice. Add to the wok along with the chicken and garlic from the other pan.

Cook for another 4-5 minutes, or until the sauce has reduced somewhat and all the vegetables are cooked through. If you want to thicken the sauce, add a small amount of flour. Serve on top of rice!

Thanks for reading and happy cooking!

Cheesy Chicken and Mushrooms

I was really planning on eating super-well this week. Really. :) I have decided to start the Couch-to-5K program(look it up!) and start jogging/running this summer, because I'd like to be in a bit better shape than I am right now. A friend of mine is going it with me, to make things easier. We're officially starting in 2 weeks, but I figured I'd work on jogging on my own until then so I won't embarrass myself the first week - sounds like a great plan, yes? And with that comes healthy eating. I just got a new healthy cookbook, so I felt like I could totally handle this whole thing.

And then I got home this afternoon. And I was trying (really, I was) to find a recipe out of my new book to try. And then I remembered a meal I've had in the past...it's lightly breaded/fried chicken mixed with sauteed mushrooms and then covered in cheese and baked. Mmmm.

So much for a healthy dinner. Pairing it with a salad totally counts, right? Right. Anyway, back to the recipe. This is one my mother has been making forever (again, we're onto family recipes), and it's so easy to make, and so very tasty. Between the yummy mushrooms and the crispy chicken and the melted cheese, it's really divine. Comfort food at its best. :D

This recipe is really easy to size up or down, depending on how many people you want to serve. I'll put in a serving for 2 here, but I made myself a personal serving and you can make as many as you want! And if you're not a mushroom fan, I'm very sorry. Mushrooms are my favorite vegetable (even if a large portion of the population thinks "they're icky because they grow in moldy caves", as a friend of mine would say), so a lot of recipes I have will include them. If you don't like them, I suppose you could leave them out but you'd be missing out!
 

Cheesy Chicken and Mushrooms

Serves 2

Ingredients

• 2 boneless chicken breasts
• 6-8 white button mushrooms
• 1/4 c. flour
• 1 t. garlic salt
• salt and pepper, to taste
• Canola oil
• 1/2 c. shredded mozzarella cheese

Before you start:Cube your chicken breasts and quarter your mushrooms. 

Recipe

1. Drizzle canola oil into a pan, enough to make about a 1/4" layer in the bottom. Heat it up to about medium heat.
2. Add the mushrooms and garlic salt and cook on medium heat for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. The mushrooms should be lightly browned and soft. Remove from pan and set aside.
3. Mix the flour with generous amounts of salt and pepper, pour onto a plate, and roll your cubed chicken in the flour mixture to bread it. 
4. Add the chicken pieces to the oil, and lightly fry them for a few minutes on each side. The pieces should be lightly browned and firm. Remove from the oil, pat dry, and mix with the mushrooms.
5. Split the chicken and mushrooms in half, and put each half in a fairly cohesive pile into a greased baking dish. Top each "pile" with a quarter cup of cheese.
6. Place the dish on the top rack of your oven and broil on low for 3-4 minutes. The cheese will be melted and bubbly, starting to brown. Serve immediately.

Thanks for reading and happy cooking!

Peach Crunch

 Time for a family favorite! My mom is the type of person who bakes lots of goodies for lots of different events. Every Sunday, she bakes a coffee cake for her Sunday School class. She was a "room mom" and a PTA member when I was in elementary school, so she was always having to bake things, either for a classroom party or a teacher appreciation lunch or whatever else goes on at a school involving tasty treats. :) She's also had quite a few parties at her office, and often gives baked goods as Christmas gifts. Our kitchen certainly gets used often!

Over the years, she's developed quite a few really easy recipes to ease the burden of having to bake tons and tons of things. Most of them rely on ingredients a lot of people would use, like cake mix and pre-fab cookie dough. However, she adds more to them and so they always taste delicious and like they took tons of time to make.

Peach Crunch is a perennial favorite! My mom usually makes it for our family, but whenever she brings it to a luncheon/party it always gets rave reviews. And no wonder! The filling is perfect, the topping is crisp and buttery, and it all melts in your mouth. Hard to believe it only requires 4 (in a pinch, 3!) ingredients, right? And two of them are super-easy to find: cake mix and pie filling. This is the perfect dessert to make for lazy/busy people who also want something tasty. :) It's best served fresh out of the oven, with vanilla ice cream.

I usually bake Peach Crunch in a 9x9" pan, but you don't have to stick to that. The pan I used this time around was more like a loaf pan, and it still worked out! Any square or round pan around that size should work just fine. As far as the recipe goes, it's really flexible - make it easy on yourself and just work with what you have. If you don't like peaches, feel free to substitute in any pie filling you want - apple or cherry would probably work great, though my family always uses peach. The cake mix variety is also up to you - yellow cake would make an equally good topping.

 

Peach Crunch

Ingredients

• 1 can peach pie filling
• 1 box white cake mix
• 1 stick butter
• 1 T. cinnamon sugar

Before you start:Preheat the oven to 365 degrees, and melt the butter in a microwave. About a minute and a half on high should do it! 

Recipe

1. Grease a pan with cooking spray, and then pour the can of pie filling into the pan. Use a fork to spread it out evenly, then sprinkle the top with cinnamon sugar.
2. Stir the melted butter into the cake mix until it is completely combined - clumps should form. Crumble the mixture over the top of the peaches, being sure to completely cover the fruit with the crumble.
3. Bake for 30-45 minutes. The top should be browned all over and the filling should be bubbly. Let cool for a few minutes before serving.

Thanks for reading and happy cooking!

Lemon Asparagus Pasta

This recipe showcases a vegetable that my whole family loves - asparagus! Asparagus is almost always in my refrigerator because it's so easy to prepare and I love the flavor of it.

When my family took a trip to Germany, we noticed that the Germans love their asparagus, too! The German word for asparagus is "spargel" (which is so fun to say!). There were spargel stands all over the countryside, much like Texas has fireworks stands everywhere. A ton of restaurants offered dishes with asparagus, because it was fresh and in season. My personal favorite, however, is the yearly Spargel Festival in which they crown a Spargel Queen! I think they could make an awesome scepter modeled off of an asparagus stalk.

Anyway, I digress. This recipe uses asparagus, but not as a side! It's actually pureed into a sauce with lots of lemon flavor, like an asparagus-lemon pesto! I was a little skeptical at first, as I usually prefer to have my asparagus in a more recognizable form, but it's delicious!

When you're cooking with asparagus, be sure to avoid using the very end of the stalk - it's tough and not very flavorful. The easiest way to get rid of the ends of the stalks is to just snap each stalk into 2 pieces with your fingers. The break point is where the tough part begins, so just throw the bottom away and use the rest!

Be sure to cook the asparagus for a long-enough time - it needs to be soft enough so that it will puree easily. Also, you don't have to roast the pine nuts (the original recipe didn't call for it) but I think that it brings out the flavor. :) 

Lemon Asparagus Pasta

Source:The Healthy College Cookbook

Serves 2

Ingredients

• 10-15 stalks asparagus
• 1/2 lb. pasta
• 2 T. olive oil
• Canola oil
• 2 T. pine nuts
• 1 t. lemon juice
• 2 t. lemon pepper seasoning
• Salt and pepper, to taste
• 1/4 c. Parmesan cheese

Before you start:Cut your asparagus stalks into 1.5-2" lengths and bring a small pot of salted water to a boil.

Recipe

1. Add the asparagus to the boiling water and cook until just barely tender, about 8 minutes.
2. Put some canola oil in a pan, and add the pine nuts and one teaspoon of the lemon pepper seasoning. Toast the nuts at medium heat until they are fragrant and just starting to brown.
3. Remove the asparagus with a slotted spoon and put it into a food processor. You'll be using the water for the pasta as well. Bring the water back to a boil and add the pasta. Cook according to your package's directions.
4. In the food processor, add the lemon juice, the rest of the lemon pepper seasoning, salt, pepper, oil, and half of the pine nuts (save the rest for garnishing!). Blend until smooth - add more oil if you need to.
5. Drain the pasta, then combine with the asparagus mixture, and stir in some of the parmesan. Top with the rest of the parmesan and pine nuts.

Thanks for reading and happy cooking!

Guilt-Free Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

I must say that, despite my love for all desserts, I have a soft spot for cookies. They're portable, tasty, and easy to make. Probably the first recipe I ever applied on my own was for some variety of cookie.

Oatmeal chocolate chip is one of the best varieties, in my opinion. I love the oatmeal texture but I was never a fan of raisins, so chocolate chips are always a tasty substitute.

This recipe is a little unusual in its ingredients because it's actually fairly healthy! Most recipes use a whole cup of butter, but this one only uses about a quarter cup, replacing the rest with mashed banana. Seems a little odd, but you can't taste the difference! Each cookie is only 50 calories - how magical! :) So, whether you're baking them for health-conscious friends or just want to enjoy some yourself without feeling guilty, these cookies are for you.

 

Guilt-Free Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

Source:Sweet Nothings

Makes 2-3 dozen

Ingredients

• 1/2 c. flour
• 1/4 t. salt
• 1 t. baking soda
• 1 1/2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
• 5 tablespoons margarine
• 1/3 c. light brown sugar, firmly packed
• 1/3 c. white sugar
• 1/2 c. pureed/mashed banana (roughly 1 banana)
• 1 t. vanilla extract
• 1/2 c. chocolate chips (can be mini or regular-size and whatever variety you want - I chose mini semi-sweet)

Before you start: Melt the butter and preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Recipe

1. In a large bowl, stir together the flour, salt, baking soda, and oats.
2. In a smaller bowl, combine the sugars, melted margarine, banana, and vanilla. Stir until smooth.
3. Add the wet ingredients to the larger bowl with the flour mixture and stir until a dough is formed. Add the chocolate chips and stir them in.
4. Spoon the dough out into tablespoon-sized portions on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. 
5. Bake for 8-10 minutes. Cookies should be slightly browned on the edges and not too gooey in the center.

Delicious! I love these - one of my favorite cookie recipes. :)

Thanks for reading and happy cooking!