Cooooooookies!

I am particularly proud of these cookies. I spend a lot of time messing around with recipes trying to make them healthier, and while it's not always a disaster, the results often leave me wishing I'd just left well enough alone. Any doubters just ask David to recount the now infamous Whole Milk Will Probably Work Just As Well As Heavy Cream Carbonara Incident...ahem. Lesson learned.

Well, mostly. When it comes to baked goods, I learned from my mom that lots of times cookies, breads and muffins take well to healthification. This recipe started out as a Martha Stewart Chocolate Chunk Oatmeal Banana Walnut cookie (that's a mouthful). It being Martha, of course, it was chock full of butter and white sugar. With all that otherwise good for you stuff in them, I could just feel the little darlings begging me to tweak them.

First, I always like to replace butter with oil- it usually works just fine and makes the cookies stay moist longer. Easy enough. Then, I decided to substitute honey for the sugar. Actually, I was out of sugar, and had honey, plus, honey is much healthier. But, another neato bonus of using honey is that because it has a more intense sweetness than sugar, you can use less.The recipe originally called for 1 cup of sugar. I got away with 1/2 a cup of honey! Call me crazy, but this stuff really gets me going.

A little googling taught me that to compensate for its liquidity, though, you're supposed to lessen other liquid-y things in recipes when you sub it for sugar. Fingers crossed, I reduced the fat (butter in Martha's case, oil in mine) by half.

And guess what?! It WORKED! These are some killer cookies, if I do say so. Chewy, nutty, wholesome, but super satisfying. And they're not really so bad for you, so you can get away with eating them for breakfast, and cookies for breakfast is never a bad thing.





Martha Miranda Cookies

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole-wheat flour
1 teaspoon coarse salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup honey
1 egg
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup mashed ripe banana (about 1 large)
1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
8 ounces semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped into 1/4-inch chunks
1/2 cup coarsely chopped walnuts (about 2 ounces), toasted

Mix the oil and honey.
Add the egg and vanilla and mix well.
Mash in the banana.
Add the flour, baking soda and salt.
Add the oats, chocolate, and nuts. Stir.
Bake at 375 for about 10 minutes.