Breakfast Cookies

Once in a while, I make a huge batch of these and keep them on hand in the freezer for a quick breakfast. They're cookies, but healthy enough to be called breakfast (don't expect them to taste like your average cookie--they're not nearly as sweet as regular oatmeal or chocolate chip cookies). If you can't find the whole wheat pastry flour (I have no trouble finding it, but just in case...) then you can use half whole wheat flour and half white flour.

Breakfast Cookies

1 cup oat bran (find this next to the oatmeal in the grocery store)
3/4 cup orange juice (I squeeze an orange or two for this after grating it for the orange zest)
1 Tbsp. orange zest
1 cup + 1 Tbsp. unsweetened applesauce
1 Tbsp. canola oil
1 cup honey
1/3 cup firmly packed brown sugar
3 eggs
1 1/2 Tbsp. vanilla
3 cups whole wheat pastry flour  <---not to be confused with whole wheat flour
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 cup non-fat dry milk
3 cups old fashioned oats
1 cup walnuts, chopped
1 cup raisins

Preheat oven to 375. Combine the oat bran and orange juice in a small bowl and set aside. In a large bowl (preferably a mixer) combine the applesauce, canola oil, honey, brown sugar, eggs, vanilla and orange zest. In a separate bowl, combine the pastry flour, baking powder and baking soda, then slowly add it to the mixer. Add the soaked oat bran, dry milk, oats, nuts, and raisins and mix or stir just to combine.  Drop by tablespoons onto a cookie sheet sprayed with cooking spray. (I use a spring-loaded scoop--like an ice cream scoop, but it only holds a tablespoon--to scoop it, level it off, and then drop it onto the cookie sheets. It makes all the cookies very uniform in shape and size). Bake for 12-14 minutes. By using a level tablespoon of dough for each cookie, I got 84 cookies out of one batch. (I put them in little baggies of 3 and throw them in the freezer--you can take out a bag whenever you want them and put them in the microwave for 10 seconds to thaw). Sometimes I'll make large cookies instead of small ones.

Nutrition info for 1 cookie:
Calories: 65
Fat: 1 g
Fiber: 1 g
Carbohydrates: 12 g