As the weather slowly gets warmer, I prefer wholesome foods for breakfast which are at room temperature and not hot from the toaster, like these cookies, filled with good things and easy to prepare and with only one requirement, chilling the cookie dough balls before baking them !

According to me, oatmeal cookies should be prepared with rolled oat flakes but also oatmeal or oat flour, but since I rarely have oat flour handy, I just place the oat flakes in a food processor and pulse until they become a powder. By the way, adding a little malt extract powder adds depth and flavor so try to get some for all of your baked goods, such as breads, cookies and cakes.

The combination of whole oat flakes, a mixture of soaked and plumped dried fruits and mixed pre-roasted nuts will add texture, crunch and sweetness to the cookies.

Since I’ve reduced the sugar to ½ cup, I added molasses to the sugar to transform into an easy and flavorful dark brown sugar substitute.

To simplify things, most of the mixing happens in the food-processor, since I already used it to make the oat flour, which is one less mixer to use and wash up, since a wooden spoon for combing the creamy ingredients with the flours and dried fruits and nuts is more than enough.

One more thing, chilling the dough is really important. Why ? Because the chilled cookie dough balls will retain their shape and spread out much less when chilled and then baked, resulting into thicker and softer cookies. It goes without saying, please don’t overbake them since they continue to cook a bit when removed from the oven while cooling down.

You can use a baking dish covered with baking paper or these handy flat silicon molds (or a silicon mat if you have one) to avoid overbaking the bottoms.

That’s my story, so enjoy the month of MAY … :)