Healthy-ish Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

A week or so ago my sister Hilda posted a recipe for Healthy Oatmeal Cookies on her blog, Handmade Therapy. You can see the original post with the recipe here.

My sister did a few things differently from the recipe that she had, and I did as well. This is what I did differently from the original recipe:

• I used a little less than a cup of spelt flour and 1/4 cup of soy flour instead of the whole wheat flour
• I added about 1/3 cup of flaxseed meal
• I didn't have molasses, so I used a tbsp of parked dark brown sugar mixed with a bit of water instead
• I used 1/4 cup of extra virgin olive oil and 1/4 cup of applesauce for the oil measurement
• I added the 1/2 cup of chopped walnuts and about 3/4 cup of chocolate chips

Waiting for the mix to cool in the fridge was the hardest part... I wanted warm chocolate chip cookies! But I figured it was worth the wait since it would improve the final flavour of the cookies (according to my sister in her post).

They definitely looked pretty and appetizing when they came out of the oven, and they were tasty, but I would do a couple of things differently next time:

• I didn't find the cookies sweet enough, so I would add more brown sugar. I suppose that would detract from the "healthiness" of the cookies, but they would taste better and I care more about taste than health in my baked goods.
• I would add the extra egg white that's suggested in the original recipe to help the cookies stay together a bit better. They weren't crumbly, but the dough could benefit from better binding.
• I'd probably add a bit more applesauce or perhaps a bit of milk to increase the moistness of the finished cookies.

Overall, I like these, and I actually think these are the type of cookies that will taste better cooled down (as I'm writing this, they are still warm from the oven so I haven't tasted them cold yet). I also think there is some good nutrition in these cookies and it helps me feel a bit less guilty about eating so many of them, since my husband isn't a big baked goods fan (tragic, I know).