Giant Breakfast Cookies

For breakfast this morning I tried another Heavenly Homemaker recipe that uses soaked grains.  Cookies for breakfast...what's not to like? :)  These are great!  Soft, chewy, mildly sweet.  Mmmm.  And they're pretty versatile. You can add a lot of stuff to them to suit your taste.  The recipe says to add raisins or chocolate chips.  But any nut, seed, dried fruit, etc. would work fine.  I added raisins, homemade chocolate chips and a little ground flax seed to ours.  I think next time I'll add even more raisins.  And some nuts for a little crunch would be good too.  These are super easy, super tastey, and very healthy!  And it makes a big batch.  I got 22 out of it.  And I made some of them quite large.  Now I have a good stock in the freezer :)  Can't wait to give Rebecca cookies for breakfast today.  She'll love it.  You can also make this into breakfast cake instead of cookies.  I'll post the recipe below.  Hopefully I'll get around to trying that soon.  Maybe when our cookies are gone.

Giant Breakfast Cookies

1 cup butter, melted
¾ cup honey (I used a combo of mostly honey and a little maple syrup)
2 eggs
1 t. salt
1 t. cinnamon
1 t. baking soda
1 t. vanilla
½ cup buttermilk (I used a little more than this for soaking)
2 cups whole wheat flour
2 cups whole rolled oats
1 cup raisins or chocolate chips (or any nut, seed, dried fruit...I'll use more than 1 cup next time)

To soak the grains:

Melt and cool butter. In a glass bowl, stir together flour, oats, butter and cultured buttermilk. Add a bit more buttermilk than the 1/2 cup the recipe calls for if the grains are not all moistened. Cover and let the grains soak overnight. Stir in the remaining ingredients in the morning.  Scoop heaping tablespoons of dough onto a cookie sheet (I used pretty big mounds of dough to get good sized cookies). Bake at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes. Allow cookies to cool 3-4 minutes on cookie sheet before removing cookies to cool on a wire rack.

To make without soaking the grains:

Mix butter, honey, eggs, salt, cinnamon, soda, vanilla and buttermilk. Stir in flour and oats. Fold in raisins or chocolate chips. Scoop heaping tablespoons of dough onto a cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes. Allow cookies to cool 3-4 minutes on cookie sheet before removing cookies to cool on a wire rack.

 

**Edited 1/17/12 - I finally got around to trying this in cake form.  It was very good, but there is no way it would fit in a 9" pan.  Use a 9x13.  I also made it with 3 cups flour/1 cup oats since I think the oats are harder to digest.

Breakfast Cake:

To make this into a cake increase the buttermilk to 3/4 cups for soaking.  Add the remaining ingredients and put in a greased 9" 9x13 pan.  Bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes.