Breakfast Bearclaws Revisited

I'm a terrible breakfast eater. I hate cereal and can only eat so much toast, so I often boycott breakfast foods all together and eat lunch/dinner foods for breakfast. However, lately we have been very good with our dinner portion sizes and have been leftover-free, so I've been at a loose end for breakfast. I first made these two years ago and adored them, but then I forgot about the recipe and never made them again.

On a little trip through my old posts, I can across the post and thought that I must make them again. These cookies are very very substantial and they taste fantastic. It's much healthier than a sweet muffin for breakfast and they keep me nice and full until lunch.

This recipe makes lots of cookies, especially since I make mine fairly small. I bagged up a lot of them and threw them in the freezer and they froze and defrosted really well.

I took some of them to work and they were a hit with my workmates too.

Breakfast Bearclaw Cookies
from The Girl Can't Cook by Cinda Chavich

2 cups softened unsalted butter
2 cups brown sugar
4 large eggs
3/4 cup natural yoghurt or buttermilk (I have tried both but like the texture of the ones with yogurt better)
2 cups plain flour
2 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 cup wheat bran
1 tbs baking powder
2 tsp baking soda
4 cups rolled oats
3/4 cup chocolate chips
3/4 cup sunflower seeds
3/4 cup sliced almonds (I like using slivered almonds)

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celcius.

Cream the butter and sugar together until fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time. Finally add the yogurt and beat well. I use my hand held electric mixer and a very large bowl because the mixture is too large for my stand mixer.

In a seperate bowl, combine all the dry ingredients except for the chocolate chips, seeds and almonds. Add these to the wet ingredients and combine well. Finally, stir through the chocolate chips, seeds and almonds.

Line a tray with baking paper and place small scoops of the cookie dough one the tray. I use about 2 tbs of dough for each cookie and fit about 12 cookies on a tray. They do spread a little bit. Flatten the cookies slightly and bake them for about 12 minutes. My oven runs a little cool but I like my cookies soft so I tend to err on the side of underbaking. The recipe suggests cooking for 12-15 minutes.