Spacecakes 2.0

This version is toastier, crunchier, crumblier, still savory, and delicious.

Ingredients
1/2 cup almonds
1/4 + 1/2 cups rolled oats and/or quick cook steel cut oats
1 large handful fresh basil leaves, rinsed and dried
1 clove garlic
1-2 tomatillos (optional)
1/4 cup almond butter
2 tbsp olive oil
Squeeze or two of lemon juice
Generous 1/4 tsp ground cumin
(optional: 1 tsp salt)
1/8-1/4 cup water
1 cup grated zucchini
1/2 cup or slightly more stone ground whole wheat flour

Preheat the oven to 475°.

Lightly salt the zucchini and toss. Let sit for 10 minutes, then wring out well in a kitchen towel to remove excess moisture.

In a food processor, pulse the almonds until evenly ground. Add 1/4 cup oats and pulse a few more times. Add basil, garlic, and tomatillos, and blend until everything is finely chopped. Add the almond butter, olive oil, lemon juice, cumin, salt if desired, and 1/8 cup water. Blend until smooth, adding a little more water if necessary to help the ingredients combine easily.

Scoop the mixture out into a bowl and mix in the zucchini, then the oats, then the flour. You can add a little more water if necessary to get all the flour to combine, but the dough should be thick rather than easily spreadable. Spoon onto a lightly greased cookie sheet and flatten to make cakes. Bake for 15 minutes.

Makes 8-12 spacecakes depending on how you size them. You can freeze extras and thaw them in the toaster.

Spacecakes

Breakfast cookies are, of course, for breakfast, but is there a way to pack whole grains and veggies and protein into some sort of magic, savory, whole food, hand-holdable biscuit for the middle of the on-the-go toddler day? Enter the spacecake. So named because (1) it's fun to say and (2) it's way better than astronaut ice cream and (3) it's just as unlikely as astronaut ice cream to ever make it onto an actual space mission menu (because of crumbs, apparently).*

Adapted from this recipe here, with some tweaks to improve the texture and some added tomato juice and lemon for Vitamin C (which helps maximize iron absorption from the almonds and oats, which is nice if you're trying to make sure a toddler gets enough iron in his diet). These are flavorful, so if your kid prefers their food bland, take out the shallot and garlic and maybe add some chopped apple for a bit of sweetness. If you're making these for yourself, add the optional salt, and eat them warm out of the oven, maybe dipped in some yogurt sauce.

Probably, though, you'll make them as a healthy snack for someone too young to care that they're green, because you'll think (like I did) that they look...dry and healthy. That's fine. Just know that if you taste one that's still warm from the oven, you'll probably have a hard time taking just one bite.

Ingredients
1/2 cup almonds
3/4 cups rolled oats or quick cook steel cut oats
3-4 handfuls spinach, baby arugula, or other leafy greens
1 small shallot
1-2 cloves garlic
1 plum tomato
1/4 cup almond butter
1 tbsp olive oil
Zest of 1/2 lemon
Squeeze or two of lemon juice
1/4 tsp ground cumin
(optional: 1 tsp salt)
1/8-1/4 cup water
Scant 3/4 cups stone ground whole wheat flour

Preheat the oven to 475°.

In a food processor, pulse the almonds until evenly ground. Add about half the oats and pulse a few more times. Add greens by the handful, then the shallot and garlic, and blend until everything is finely chopped. Add the tomato, almond butter, olive oil, lemon zest and juice, cumin, salt if desired, and 1/8 cup water. Blend until smooth, adding a little more water if necessary to help the ingredients combine easily.

Scoop the mixture out into a bowl and mix in the flour. Spoon onto a lightly greased cookie sheet and flatten to make cakes. Bake for 15 minutes.

Makes 6-10 spacecakes depending on how you size them. You can freeze extras and thaw them in the toaster.

*Apparently, it's also a pot thing, but you know what, I'm having too much fun saying it to change the name now, so too bad. Just be cautious with the spelling (space cake, two words, can be ordered in Amsterdam. Spacecake, one word, is a fun, kid-friendly veggie-filled biscuit that you might want to call something else in front of your Dutch friends).

BREAKFAST COOKIES

Sometimes, you're wandering along the road of life, minding your own business, when it suddenly becomes apparent that breakfast cookies are a real, actual, possible-to-create-in-this-particular-universe sort of a thing. And then you make them. And you eat them. And you tinker and bake and eat some more.

These particular breakfast cookies were purportedly inspired by the need to find a way to transmute the grain-and-veggie mixes I had been feeding my increasingly independent one-year-old into something he could hold in his own two hands (spoon feeding is for babies; big kids feed themselves cookies for breakfast).

Of course, secretly, the breakfast cookies are for me.

Did I mention that they taste like a perfect blend of chewy cookie and muffin but have crazy healthy ingredients and just a hint of banana-cinnamon-vanilla sweetness?

Make some and see.

Ingredients
2-3 oz baby spinach
2 ripe or overripe bananas
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup or slightly more creamy 100% peanut or almond butter
1 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup Bob's Red Mill 10 grain breakfast cereal*
1/2 cup cooked quinoa*
1/2 apple, peeled and diced**

Preheat oven to 350°.

Toss the spinach, bananas, cinnamon, vanilla, and peanut butter in a food processor and blend until smooth. Spoon out into a mixing bowl and add the grains and apple. Mix well to combine.

Spoon the dough onto a nonstick cookie sheet and pat to form cookies. Bake for 15 minutes or until golden brown on the bottom.

Makes about 12 cookies.

*you can sub rolled oats (quick cook or regular) for either or both of these, or a different cooked grain like farro...just use whatever you have on hand. I liked this combination for the texture and protein.
**I like my cookies not too sweet. But if you like them on the sweeter side, consider subbing raisins or chocolate chips for the apple, and use bananas that are overripe.

Best Oatmeal Ever

The only thing that I have to say about this recipe is that it is oatmeal-hating-husband-approved, after eleven years of wrinkle-nosed reactions to anything remotely resembling porridge.

Ingredients
3/4 cups Bob's Red Mill steel cut oats, or slightly more
1 tbsp olive oil
1/4 cup milk
1 1/2 cups water
1/4 cup golden raisins
Marcona almonds, very coarsely chopped
Brown sugar
Cinnamon
Freshly grated nutmeg

Heat a smallish pot over medium-high heat. Add the oats and toast, stirring or shaking the pan from time to time, for 3-4 minutes. Push the oats to the side of the pan, and add the olive oil to the other side to heat. Stir to coat the oats, and continue toasting for another couple of minutes until they smell fragrant and start to brown.

Add the water and milk, cover, and bring to a boil. Turn the heat down to low and simmer for 13 minutes. Add the raisins, stir, and simmer for 2 minutes more. Uncover and continue to cook, stirring, until any excess liquid is evaporated and oats are just slightly wetter than desired texture. Turn off the heat, replace cover, and let sit for a couple of minutes.

Serve sprinkled with a little brown sugar, cinnamon, freshly grated nutmeg, and Marcona almonds. (If you don't have Marcona almonds, you could toast sliced almonds and put them over the top, but the Marconas are worth finding, especially because their slight saltiness complements the sweetness of the brown sugar.)

Serves 2.