Carrot Cake Cookies

Oh yes, you heard me - carrots in cookies. Delicious and fluffy Carrot Cake Cookies. Seriously, these are totally the cookie incarnation of carrot cake. The carrots lend an excellent cake-like consistency to these cookies, as well as a natural sweetness so you won't need nearly as much sugar as you would for other oatmeal raisin type cookies!

What you'll need (Makes 3 dozen cookies)

• 240g unsalted butter (room temperature)
• 180g caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 200g grated carrots
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 360g flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• 140g oats
• 200g raisins
• 100g walnuts (optional)

What to do:

Preheat your oven to 170C/340F.

Prepare the 200g of grated carrots. 2-3 large carrots should cover it.

In a large mixing bowl, combine the eggs, sugar, butter, and vanilla extract. Once thoroughly blended - no butter lumps! - add in the grated carrots. 

Mix the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and ginger together in a separate bowl. Gradually add this to the wet mixture, stirring as you go. Next gradually stir in the oats.

Finally, fold in the raisins and, if you want to include them, the walnuts.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Then use a spoon to scoop rounded heaps of cookie dough, spaced evenly (leave at least an inch between each mound of dough), onto the baking sheet. Pop into the oven and bake for about 10 minutes, or until the cookies turn lightly golden brown on the top. 

Allow the cookies to cool for 2 minutes before removing from the baking sheet. And enjoy!

Eating your veggies with your cookies - sounds like a win to me, don't you agree? 

If you want slightly fancier cookies, these are excellent (and slightly sweeter) with a dollop of cream cheese frosting on top too!

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Almond Butter Cookies

Mound of finished cookies.

I was aiming for a slightly healthier (and maybe a bit more grown-up?) twist on classic peanut butter cookies here. I used a natural, no-sugar-or-salt-added brand of almond butter, and much less sugar than typical cookie recipes call for since almonds are already sweet! So these have a great chocolate and nut combination, without going full on everyone's favorite orange and brown brand of peanut butter chocolate cups. You know what I mean?

Ingredients

What you'll need:

(Makes 2.5 dozen cookies)

• 180g self raising flour (I used Dove's Farm Gluten-Free blend)
• 100g soft light brown sugar
• 100g oatmeal (I used a gluten free variety here too)
• 100g chopped milk chocolate
• 100g almond butter
• 100g unsalted butter
• 1 egg
• 1/2 tbls baking soda
• 2 tsp vanilla
• pinch salt

Not quite finished - must vanquish the giant lump of butter first!

What to do:

Preheat the oven to 175C/350F.

Next, cream together the butter, almond butter, vanilla, egg and sugar. I used a handheld mixer on low. Make sure to get all of the butter lumps out!

Mix together the flour, baking soda, and salt and gradually add to the wet mixture. Once thoroughly blended in, add the oatmeal.

Chocolate chunks everywhere!

Finally, blend in the chocolate chunks. Aim for relatively even distribution. This way you will have no sad, chocolate-less cookies, and only happy, chocolate chippy cookies.

Form into cookie dough balls and space evenly on a cookie sheet. Bake for 10-12 minutes.

These don't need to cool for too long before being spatula-ed off the cookie sheet. And then eaten. Warm. Yum!