I’m strangely lethargic this week. I think I’m still recovering from the intense concentration of last week’s course. Anyway, I’ve been mooching around on my last week of leave, not doing very much, and not even having the energy to feel properly guilty about it! I did, however, do a little bit of baking this morning. You see, a friend of mine has just had keyhole surgery, and is at the bored-out-of-her-skull-but-too-weak-to-do-much phase of recovery, so I’d arranged to bring lunch and spend the afternoon.
Lunch did, of course, need to be somewhat healthy, so I made quinoa tabouli, augmented it with falafel from the excellent Half Moon Café and zaatar bread from the equally delightful Zaatar, and added a tub of tzatziki which had been lurking in the fridge. Delicious, healthy, and hopefully sufficiently gentle for a stomach recovering from surgery and not very tolerant of fatty, rich foods.
Which is all very well, but some sort of sweet was clearly required. I mean, yes, we all like to be healthy, but sweets are what I *do*. My first thought was to make my choc-chip oatmeal cookies, on the grounds that they are, in fact, the best cookies ever. But, while they are certainly not the most unhealthy cookies out there (I am firmly convinced that the presence of oats in any food renders it instantly healthy), they do contain quite a lot of chocolate, as well as butter and canola oil and an egg.
On the other hand, I did have some rather glorious dried fruit from my market visit, which sounded more like it. And replacing butter with apple-sauce in a recipe this prone to being chewy and moist was probably not going to be a problem.
It wasn’t. These cookies are soft, a little bit chewy, and very, very comforting to eat. They practically beg for a glass of milk (or soy milk, if that’s the way you groove) (no, I don’t know why I just typed that either) and a nice book to read while you curl up on the sofa. Actually, summer is entirely the wrong season for this kind of biscuit, but what can you do?
As a bonus, they are even quicker to make than the choc-chip cookies. You can’t ask better than that, now can you?
Your Shopping List
100 g brown sugar 75 g raw caster sugar or ordinary caster sugar 75 g apple sauce (pick a brand that really is mostly apple, with as little sugar or other stuff as possible) 60 ml canola or sunflower oil 1 egg 1/2 tsp vanilla extract 100 g rolled oats 150 g plain flour, or a good gluten-free flour mix 1/2 tsp bicarb of soda 1/2 tsp baking powder 1/2 tsp cinnamon 10o g raisins 75 g chopped dried apricots
