Almost Vegan, Earth-Friendly Cookies for the Trail!

I am going to tell you right now, I am even MORE jazzed about this latest version of my Trail Mix Cookies recipe! I’ve been working to make these cookies more organic and “earth friendly”, for those who are trying to include less animal byproducts in their diet.

Have you ever heard the old phrase, “necessity is the mother of invention”? I have to admit, that is what partially drove the egg-free status of this variation of the recipe. I was STILL out of eggs and didn’t feel like going to the store. So I had to make do with what I had.

Do you know that you can turn flax meal into an very healthful egg replacer? It even ends up the consistency of eggs. All you have to do, per each egg you need to replace, is take 1 tablespoon of flax meal, mix it with 2-3 tablespoons of water, and simmer it on the stove (while stirring) until it reaches the desired consistency. (Five minutes or less.) Look! It really DOES start to get that gel-like eggy consistency! And being a “superfood”, it can only help the nutritional value of your recipe! I haven’t tried yet, but I hear you can make this ahead of time and store it in your fridge for a few days. How handy!

Just to be more healthful, I decided to use agave instead of Splenda. Splenda is fine and has less calories than sugar, but is much more “chemical” whereas orangic agave sweetener is a low glycemic index, completely natural sweetener from plant sources. (Many earth-friendly folks don’t even like using honey because it is from animal sources.) I’ve just started experimenting with agave, and so far, have been incredibly impressed. Even my non-excitable husband called it “amazing”! So, I used that instead of sugar or Splenda (sucralose). I can’t tell you how impressed I am. With these changes, I cannot keep my hands off of these cookies. I have had five already today! They really taste more fattening and less healthful than they realy are! LOL!

I use an 1/8 cup sized scoop, and this recipe made 54 snack-sized cookies.

Almost Vegan More Earth-Friendly Cookies for the Trail!

1/2 cup organic agave sweetener
1/4 cup softened butter (I imagine you could use light olive oil – I just didn’t want to give up butter!)
1/2 cup applesauce (I used Cinnamon Applesauce)
1/8 cup water
1 teaspoon vanilla (I use the luscious clear stuff I got in Mexico)
1 tablespoon flax mixed with 2 1/2 tablespoons water and briefly cooked as described above, cooled
1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup old-fashioned oats
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon Butter-flavored Also Salt
4 cups Cheerios
1/2 cup Nestle Dark Chocolate Raisinets
1/4 cup Almond Accent Salad Almonds
1/2 cup Craisins and/or golden raisins

Cream agave, butter, applesauce, water, vanilla and flax mixture together. Add flour, oatmeal, baking soda, and Also Salt to butter mixture and then add Cheerios, Raisinets, Salad Almond slices, and Craisins/raisins. Drop by scoop onto a cookie sheet that has been prepared with Butter-flavored Pam Spray. Spray the bottom of a glass with butter-flavored Pam, and dip into a cinnamon-sugar mixture. Flatten each cookie. Bake at about 365 degrees for 10 minutes.

Tip: Since there are so many extra “add-ins” in these cookies and not a lot of the actual binding ingredients, I found it helpful to use a very small ice cream scoop to sort of compact the ingredients into a little ball as I was getting them onto the pan. Otherwise, they were VERY prone to fall apart before I got them situated.

Makes approximately 54.

Nutritional Information per cookie:

Calories: 60
Fat: 1.7 gm
Protein: 1 gm
Carbohydrate: 9.8 gm
Sodium: 34 mg
Cholesterol: 2.2 mg