These moist oatmeal-apple cookies are the perfect dessert to pack for lunch or enjoy as a snack. They taste sweet and comforting, plus have nutritional benefits from the oats and baked apple.
When it comes to packing lunches, I like to feel like I am including foods that fortify and energize my family, to help them get through the day. With 3 cups of whole grain rolled oats in this recipe, we can all benefit from the fiber, protein, and extra vitamins and minerals the oats add. The chopped baked apple adds flavor and even more nutrients. I like this recipe because it makes me feel like I am walking that fine line between healthy and indulgent. In fact, I am going to take a big container of these cookies to my kids’ cross country meet today as a post-race treat. They are nutritious enough to pass as healthy, yet delicious enough that kids actually really want to eat them!
It seems that fine lines are a bit of a theme for me this week. In my most recent yoga class, the instructor talked about finding that space between control and letting go. We have to have some measure of control in our lives, in order to keep the train on the tracks (for the most part!). But we also need to not grip too tightly. We need to surrender to larger forces, too, and be open to outcomes we cannot imagine. It is a tricky balance. Things come up continually to help teach us to find balance–car problems, scheduling dilemmas, decisions about budgets and resources, to name a few!
In light of all the challenges and teaching moments, I’m not sure how well I did with the whole balance thing this week, except for with these cookies! With these cookies, I feel like I found it. The recipe is adapted from the inner lid of my Quaker old fashioned rolled oats container, though I used chopped apples instead of raisins.
Maybe it is because of the autumnal equinox this week that I am thinking about lines and balance. We are poised in the middle, between summer and winter, between sunlight and darkness. It is a beautiful time. I hope you all have a very lovely weekend! Happy beginning of autumn! “You will never be alone, you hear so deep / a sound when autumn comes.” –from the poem “Assurance” by William Stafford
I am sharing this recipe over at Angie’s Fiesta Friday, co-hosted this week by two great bloggers, Mollie @ The Frugal Hausfrau and Johanne @ French Gardener Dishes.
Oatmeal-Apple Cookies
Ingredients:
- 1 and 1/2 cups of unbleached all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon of baking soda
- 1 teaspoon of cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon of salt
- 1/2 cup (1 stick) plus 6 tablespoons of unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 1/2 cup of granulated sugar
- 3/4 cup of packed brown sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 teaspoon of vanilla
- 3 cups of raw oats
- 1 cup of apple, peeled and finely chopped
Directions:
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. In a medium-sized mixing bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. In a large mixing bowl, vigorously stir together the butter, sugar, and brown sugar (you may use an electric mixer if you wish–I like to use a wooden spoon and get an arm workout). Add the eggs and vanilla and stir/beat again, thoroughly combining.
Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and stir/beat well. Then add the oats and chopped apple. Mix well until everything is combined. Drop the dough by rounded tablespoonful onto ungreased cookie sheets. Bake in your 350-degree oven for 8 to 10 minutes, or until lightly golden brown. Allow the cookies to cool for a minute on the cookie sheets, then remove them to a wire rack to cool completely. Store tightly covered to preserve freshness. Enjoy!
Baking touches something deep in my soul. Deeper than I can really explain. To roll out dough gives me such comfort. I cannot really understand it, I can only honor this impulse. It must have something to do with my ancestors, with my genetics. Not everyone has this love of baking, though I think most everyone has something like this, something that they love to do and feel compelled to do.
So in making this galette, besides doing it for my family, and to share this delicious recipe with you all, I did it for me. Not just to eat, though I already had a piece, and it was delicious! But for the sheer comfort of making it. The floury mess, the glorious smells of the dough and fruit baking, the texture of the dough taking shape in my hands. It has been a challenging week, with my kids and I getting over colds, and I needed to do something to ground myself to the earth. Slicing ripe peaches and plums, rolling out dough, these are things I can do and feel like I am making a positive impact on the world.
This recipe is loosely adapted from a lovely book my daughter and husband checked out from our local library: Country Living Pies & Tarts published by Hearst Books in 2016. In my recipe, I substituted some red plums instead of using all peaches, and I used walnuts and vanilla instead of almonds and almond extract, because I did not have any almonds on hand. I can imagine that would taste great too.
I hope you all have a great weekend, and enjoy this time of year! If you have something you really like to do, something that helps give your life meaning and value, I hope you can do it. I heard we are supposed to get a break in the heat and humidity here this weekend, so I am looking forward to that! 
The sweetness of the blueberries and black raspberries (and some sugar) balance the tartness of the cherries to make a mouth-watering fruit filling full of flavor and those much-sought-after antioxidants. The biscuit topping is golden and moist, pairing beautifully with the fruit. I really notice a difference in taste when I bake with high quality butter, and butter from grass-fed cows is gaining popularity as a relatively healthy fat. With just a few basic ingredients, this cobbler is easy to make and tastes impressive.
My favorite thing about this dessert, aside from the luscious flavor, is that much of the fruit came from my very own yard! Our wonderful cherry trees gave us even more fruit than we expected, allowing me to make two cobblers, a few batches of breakfast jars, and a smoothie with them, and our black raspberries are coming along nicely! I wish I could say I picked the blueberries in this cobbler, but those I did buy from the grocery store, yet they were still sweet and juicy. In any case, seasonal fruit tastes better than candy in my book, and it reminds me to savor the moment, because each season is fleeting.
I hope you are all having a great summer so far. It has been very sunny, but much drier than usual here lately. We finally got some rain last night, and the air smells so fresh, especially since the storms cooled things off. We had an interesting Fourth of July–we got to go for a sail with my brother’s family in his boat, out to a sandbar near a small island. He put down the anchor and we all went swimming off of the boat in gorgeous, cold, clear water. That evening, we hiked a mile at dusk to the top of a hill in a nature preserve, overlooking a lake. Someone from the preserve had a campfire going, and we roasted marshmallows and ate s’mores while the fireworks showered dazzling colors over the lake. Then we hiked down in the dark woods by flashlight. It was amazing to be surrounded by so much natural beauty, up in northern Michigan for a few days.
