I know, I know – I have been writing about eating less sugar and then I go and put a recipe on the blog for cookies!!!  In fact I notice that my recipes are all sweet recipes.  This comes from people tasting my baked goods at coffee mornings or cake sales and then asking for the recipe.  So the easiest thing is to pop them on the blog site – I add a post and share a recipe!

I think they are quite good quality treats – they contain oats, seeds and fruit so bring fibre and nutrients as well as sweet yumminess.  You don’t add too much sugar so if you have opted for a lower sugar toasted muesli (they are often quite sweet) then they are not as sweet as some cookies.  They are so very quick to make – a godsend when you notice that you are on the school coffee morning rota at 9pm the day before!  Ooops – and it is always nice when there are some home baked goodies, so much better than bulk buy sweet treats from the local supermarket.  Maybe I shouldn’t share as everyone will be making them?

But they are too good to keep to myself.  Another cracking recipe from the Australian Women’s Weekly Every Day Cakes and Cookies so it is another recipe using cups.  That does make it so easy and great to get little kids baking.

Preheat the oven to 180C.  Melt 185g of butter  – you can use a 60g/100g fat spread or you can reduce the fat to about 130g and the cookies still come out just fine.  Add to this, in a large bowl, the following ingredients:

1 cup of toasted muesli,

1 cup of desiccated coconut

1 cup of rolled oats

1/2 cup of self raising flour

1/2 cup of soft brown sugar

1 tablespoon of honey or golden syrup

1/4 cup of sesame seeds OR pumpkin seeds OR sunflower seeds OR diced apricots OR …….whatever yummy thing you think will work or a mixture of a few!  Cranberries, big juicy raisins, choc chips. chopped nuts…..

1 egg, lightly beaten.

Once the ingredients are mixed well then blob tablespoon size lumps, slightly flattened, about 3 cm apart on a lined baking tray.  Pop them in the hot oven for between 12-15 minutes until they are golden.  When they come out of the oven they are all soft and gooey so you need to let them cool on the tray.  Voila – really yummy cookies that seem virtuous.  They are still quite calorific so try to resist having too many at one go – they keep well in an airtight tin (but they are completely irresistible while slightly warm from the oven!)

I think I need some savoury recipes on my blog and lots of people have asked me for vegetarian recipes – recipes that kids will eat.  I will get my thinking cap on – there are so many to choose from.  My star Christmas cookbook was Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall’s book Veg.  I have never used any of his books before and I love this one – it is rivalling Simon Rimmer’s Accidental and Seasoned Vegetarian cookbooks.  My husband suggested I just hang it by the cooker, it has been out so much since Christmas – thanks to my little brother for that, good choice! A friend of mine is the nutritionist for a veggie blog which has lots of recipes so check it out while you wait for me to come up with some at mrspantry.wordpress.com/