Bearclaws

mmm cookie goodness

This recipe came out of The Girl Can't Cook by Cinda Chavich which I raved about here. I was flipping through the breakfast section and read

Okay, cookies aren't the best thing for breakfast, but these cookies - as big as a bear claw - are chock-a-block full of good things like rolled oats, nuts and seeds.

And I was hooked. I am a big breakfast hater, because all the quick stuff people eat every day I hate with a passion - cereal and milk makes me feel ill every time I eat it - and you can only eat toast so many times. Especially when there's no plastic bread (TM Nigella) in the house and you've only got frozen mini paninis. I'd skip it, but if I do I feel awful. So these really piqued my interest.

First you cream some softened butter and brown sugar together (I used a low fat, cholesterol helping butter blend) before adding in two eggs. In another bowl, throw in some plain flour, some wholemeal flour, some baking powder, some bicarb soda and some rolled oats. I was supposed to add wheat germ too, but my bag of wheat germ has mysteriously disappeared, I substituted 1/4 cup extra of rolled oats instead of the 1/4 cup of wheat germ. Add the dry stuff to the wet stuff and mix (Cinda says with your hands, I used a wooden spoon). Lastly add some chocolate chips (I used dark couverture cooking chocolate, more because I was too cheap to add my Callebaut chocolate chips), some sunflower seeds and some almonds, then bake.

I baked them a little quicker than it says too, because I can't stand crisp biscuits. My biscuits have to be chewy.

The halved recipe ended up making about 24 big cookies, and they are spectacular. They taste amazing and have a wonderful flavour. And, they are full of fibre-y goodness so they fill you up too! DD's comment on them: "gee, they're solid little f&*%ers", which is true, but I think he liked them. I liked them.

I put the recipe the way I made it into my Living Cookbook program to calculate it's nutritional value, and each cookie is only 168cal. Tasty, filling and won't blow the diet, what more could you want?