Oat and Strawberry Cookies

If you or your kids have a sweet tooth, but you don’t want to be giving them cookies with huge amounts of sugar and no goodness at all then I recommend giving these Oat and Strawberry Cookies a go.  Not only do they use an unrefined flour, lower sugar as there is maple syrup added, oats and fruit, but they are also totally delicious.  

My kids all love a cookie and I do think a little treat doesn’t do any harm, but that doesn’t mean I can’t squeeze a bit of goodness in there at the same time. I am always looking for a chance to hide a vegetable or get an extra bit of fruit into them – especially my very fussy eater.  These Oat and Strawberry Cookies are perfect for that. 

In this recipe I have experimented with using Xylitol instead of sugar and no one noticed, but you can also used caster sugar if your prefer not to use sugar alternatives.  You can find out more about Xylitol and other sugar substitutes here.

If you don’t have or can’t get any dried strawberries you can really use any type of dried fruit instead.  In my experience they are also really delicious with dried apricot and sultanas instead of the strawberries. This quantity should give you around 15 small cookies.

**Note:  This Oat and Strawberry cookie recipe mentions a food processor several times and this is one recipe that I really do recommend using one for this as it is very hard to get it properly mixed and the fruit distributed evenly without one.  I have made it both ways though and the cookies still taste good even if the fruit isn’t spread out evenly.

What you will need for Oat and Strawberry Cookies

80g Spelt Flour
60g Rolled Oats
90g Unsalted Butter
70g xylitol (Sugar Substitute – you can use Caster Sugar)
1 tbsp Maple Syrup (I have also used Golden Syrup here for a naughtier version)
1/4tsp bicarbonate of soda
60g Dried Strawberries (you can use freeze dried if needed, but just dried will have a nicer texture in the finished cookie)
1tsp Vanilla Extract

How to make the cookies:

• Preheat the oven to 160 Degrees Centigrade 
• Soften the butter – the best way is just to leave it out of the fridge for a while.  If you do need to use a microwave then only do it for a few seconds as you really don’t want it melted.  It should just be soft.  The texture of the cookie will change if it is melted.
• Put all ingredients except the fruit into a food processor and blitz for a minute or so until it starts to come together.  You can mix, but hand but it is quite labour intensive so if you can use a food processor then I would recommend it.
• Chop the dried strawberries. You can do this by hand, but they are small and it can be tough to do so I use a blender it only takes 30 seconds to blitz
• Add the dried strawberries to the food processor and pulse just enough to distribute and combine.  You can just use a bowl and a spoon to do this step if you don’t have a food processor.
• Remove dough from food processor and use hands to finish combining
• Line two baking trays with grease proof paper.  If you want to reuse then consider getting one of these silicone tray liners for your baking
• Take heaped teaspoonfuls of the dough and roll into small balls
• Place balls onto the trays leaving a good sized gap between each one
• Flatten out the dough balls using a spoon or your finger
• Bake in the oven for around 12-14 minutes. They should be golden in colour when removed
• If they have spread during cooking and joined together then use a spatula to separate them as soon as they are removed from the oven.  Do not leave them to cool at all in this case as you won’t then be able to split them apart.  If you work straight out of the oven you can even reshape the cookie to make it more rounded, but I quite like the higgled piggily look so I tend to leave them and just separate any that have stuck together.
• Allow to cool for 1 min on the tray before transferring to a cooling rack.  If you try to move them and they start to break then they haven’t cooled for long enough

If you are looking for other snack ideas for kids then head over to this post which has a different After School Snack for everyday of the week.  To check out our other ideas for After School Snacks click on the picture: