Lemonpea's healthy 'coconutties'

You’ve probably gathered by now that I enjoy being a healthy eater, but I’m human and I also like sweet treats every now and again. However, chocolate, biscuits and sweets aren’t a health option (although it is easy to grab them out of the cupboard). To fix this little issue I’ve created a couple of sweet treats that are far healthier than those easy to grab options, which I thought I’d share with you over the next couple of weeks so you can try out the recipes to help to try and avoid those naughty treats.

This week I’m going to share my ‘coconuties’ with you. I always thought these were girl scout cookies from America but after A LOT of Googling I couldn’t find any recipes to adapt anywhere so I decided to create my own recipe from scratch using the name as an idea for ingredients. Yes that would be coconut and nuts.

So what do you need for this recipe?

Ingredients:

*½ cup almond butter

*¾ cup organic porridge oats

*¼ tsp salt

*¾ tsp baking soda

*¾ cup sugar substitute

*2tbsp coconut oil

*2tbsp organic apple sauce

*1tbsp shredded coconut

And how do you create the scrummy healthy little cookies?

Prepare a baking tray with greaseproof paper and preheat the over to 180C. 

Begin by blitzing the porridge oats until they are a fine powder (so it looks like flour). Put the oats in a mixing bowl and add the almond butter, baking soda and salt and mix the ingredients together until they are combined.

Make a caramel with ½ cup of the sugar substitute and coconut oil by heating them in a pan until they boil. Don’t stir the mixture but allow them to boil until it turns a caramel colour. Once you’ve got the colour you want take the mixture off the heat and leave it to the side. 

Add the remaining ½ cup of sugar substitute to the bowl and mix it into the oats and almond butter mixture. Add the caramel you  made and mix again making sure all the sweetness is combined well. Do the same with the apple sauce before adding your shredded coconut you can add as much or little of the coconut as you like. It adds a good texture to the cookies an

d gives them a lovely subtle, coconutty, sweet taste.

Take tablespoons of the mixture and put them onto your prepared baking tray. Flatten to the balls of mixture with a fork before putting them in the preheated over for 8-10 minutes. 

And voila! 

You should now have little, crumbly cookies, sweet and delicious to hit that sweet craving without all the naughtiness of those easy to grab treats.

N.B I test all my recipes on Jack before I post them on here. I loved this recipe as it was but Jack thought they could be sweeter. To do this I would advise sprinkling the tops of cookies with a sugar substitute before baking.