BILLY

I love to cook.

Wait, scratch that. I love to cook when I want to. And when I have lots of time. Those two criteria intersect about twice a month.

Because I am blessed with the task of feeding myself and several others three times a day, every day, most of my dinners I would call "fine." Your basic uninspired protein with a veggie side or something I picked up at Costco and subsequently assembled.

No matter what I serve, artfully finessed or not, a rotating 1/3 of my family expresses outrage. The usual dinner time sentiment from the rotating 1/3 is anger, dismissal and pleas for me to serve warm candy instead. It is for this reason you will not find a lot of savory recipes on BILLY. The fact is, I need YOU to send ME recipes. Or just come to my house and prepare dinner.

Baking is a different, more hopeful story. Not only does it bring me peace and joy, baked goods are essentially warm candy which make them an easy crowd pleaser. While I make the white flour, white sugar, butter variety of baked treat, I also enjoy experimenting with recipes to make them a little bit more healthy. Sometimes there is no substitute for the real deal. Sometimes you want omega-3's in cookie form.

A picture of my healthy cookies taken with my iPhone and the help of an 11 year-old.

Below you will find a recipe for what are called "Healthy Cookies" in my house. They are "based on a true story" in that they were born from an official, real recipe. I have made enough adjustments to safely call them my own. I even give them to the kids for breakfast! People like to eat these when they come to my house.

Preheat Oven to 350

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups almond meal (Found at Trader Joe's. Not almond flour. You want the almonds a bit gritty. Ambitious people with a Vitamix can crush almonds in-house.)
2 cups oat flour. (I use the Bob's Red Mill gluten free one. No one in the house is gluten intolerant, but why not?)
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup maple syrup (the price of real maple syrup can make you gasp. Costco has a big organic one that's reasonable. For maple syrup.)
1/2 cup Sunflower oil. (Or any vegetable oil of your choice. If you're into non-GMO and all that, there are options out there. You could use coconut oil if you like a coconut flavor. Sadly, I do not.)
1/2 cup peanut butter (Use the natural. Only ingredients on the jar should be peanuts and maybe salt.)
A cup of walnut baking pieces. (Also at Trader Joe's. If you have regular sized ones, chop them into smaller chunks.)
A jar of good jelly in a flavor that you like. I like strawberry.

Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl. Mix the wet ingredients in another bowl. Slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet ones until combined. Spoon 1 1/2 inch sized blobs onto a cookie sheet. Create a small indentation in the center of the blob and fill with jelly.

Cook for 14-15 minutes. They do not transform that much in the oven, so start with 14 minutes and see if you like the consistency.

Happy Baking!

Keely