Cookies for Breakfast

You're powerful, shouldn't your cookies be?

I created these cookies to celebrate the recent substack launch of my fellow Deep State Radio personage, Chris Cotnoir. Chris is an avid, obsessive-in-a-good-way fitness guy and his newsletter, Hiitn 50 is packed with really helpful info on how to become—and stay—a strong athlete after 50.

So, I figured the guy needs a cookie—a quick breakfast-on-the-go that’s full of protein and fiber for lasting energy. It also happens to taste really good.

It’s crazy-tweakable to your own tastes (or to what your pantry can offer).

Power Cookies

Yields approx 2 1/2 dozen

What You’ll Need:

1 cup apple sauce

2 1/2 cups instant oats

1 cup nut butter of your choice

1/2 cup chopped nuts or a combo of nuts and raisins

1/3 cup maple syrup or honey

1/4 cup ground flax seed

3 Tablespoons cocoa powder

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Zest of one orange

1/2 teaspoon salt

(dark chocolate chips…)

What You’ll Do:

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

2. Mix all the ingredients together in a large bowl until well-blended.

3. Shape the dough into golf-ball sized rounds. Press down lightly with a fork (they should not be flat, just, um, less round). Bake for 15-18 minutes until the cookies feel firm to the touch. Best way to have a sense of doneness is to give the cookies a little poke around the 10-minute mark. They’ll yield to your poking finger. Try again in 5 minutes and notice the difference.

4. Let cool on a rack. Store in an air-tight container.

A few possible tweaks:

1. Don’t have applesauce or prefer bananas? Instead use 2 soft bananas, mashed.

2. Don’t like nuts? Don’t use them.

3. Almond butter is nice. I used Skippy Natural peanut butter.

4. Don’t have flax seed? Think it’s weird? Leave it out. Or replace it with finely ground almond flour.

5. Amend the spices as you see fit. Nutmeg is great. Ginger is also full of zowie, as my grandmother used to exclaim.

6. If you keep the basics the same…nut butter, oats and applesauce or banana…you can have a grand old time making these yours.

   

   Calvin has looked up from his nap long enough to say he thinks you should make power cookies from steak, tuna, chicken and butter.