Video:Oatmeal Breakfast Cookies

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Transcript:Oatmeal Breakfast Cookies

Not only does this taste great, but this is going to be way better for you than those expensive breakfast bars you've been buying. Today I'm going to show you a really easy recipe for breakfast cookies. You heard me right - you can have cookies for breakfast if you put in some nice ingredients. We're going to use dried fruit, nice chopped walnuts - it's going to be based on the classic oatmeal cookie recipe. This is actually going to taste really good, and be fairly good for you. So let me show you how to put this together.

Okay, so step one: in our electric mixer, we're going to go ahead and cream a stick of butter - that's a half-cup - with one cup of brown sugar, packed. And you want to start out slow, and then you can turn it up. Make sure every once in awhile you just scrape down the sides. Always use the actual beater attachments to wipe your spatula - little trick there. So that's creamed together - see that? That's all we're looking for.

We're going to add into here a teaspoon of vanilla, half a cup of applesauce, which is going to give it some nice moisture and take the place of some of the butter. And I'm also going to throw in two eggs - so that's kind of our wet ingredients here. We're going to pop this thing back down and whisk that up together.

Once that's incorporated, we're going to start putting our dry ingredients in: a cup and a half of flour, a teaspoon of baking soda, half a teaspoon of salt, and a teaspoon of cinnamon. I'm going to put in about a half a cup of chopped walnuts - give or take. This is not an exact science, cookie-making. I'm also going to put in a cup of any kind of dried fruit mix - I have a little medley here - apricots, blueberries, raisins, cranberries. Obviously raisins are traditional. And then our oats - I have three cups of your classic rolled oats - and then this gets mixed together. Alright, there we go: breakfast cookie dough. Let's get these trayed up.

I have a sheet pan that I just put a little sheet of silicon mat here - Silpat. If you want to use that baking paper, the parchment paper, that works. If you want to give it a spray with the non-stick spray, also works fine. So I'm just going to put some nice big spoonfuls on here - I like to pat it down just a little bit. I got twelve cookies on my sheet - I'm going to go ahead and bake this at 350 -- that was about 17-18 minutes for me. They're set, they're firm, a little bit of golden brown around the edges - that's perfect.

And, very important, we're going to transfer these - while they're hot - right to a cooling rack. Breakfast cookie, whole grains, dried fruit, nuts - you know, it's barely a cookie. And think about your kids bragging to their friends: "Hey what'd you have for breakfast? Gruel? Guess what I had - a cookie. I have the most awesome parents ever." So give these a try.

Thanks for watching - I'm Chef John Mitzewich - for more information visit food.about.com.