"Healthy" Pumpkin Oatmeal Cookies

Oatmeal cookies are my favorite type of cookie. They are by far the easiest cookie to make. They almost always stay the same shape while baking, except for a little spreading. And if you do them correctly, they are fluffy and gooey and just amazing.

Unfortunately, to acheive that fluffiness, you often need an entire cup of butter. This is equal to two sticks.

I am not a wasteful person. Whenever I cook, I make sure I have enough just for the meal, so there aren't any leftovers. I hate using a bunch of one thing in a recipe. Also, butter isn't very good for you (obvious statement of the year). So, I decided to try using a substitute for butter this time.

I have not had a ton of luck with substitutes before. I made key lime bars once, and used a combination of salt and I think vegetable oil to substitute for butter. When I combined the salt and vegetable oil with the batter, it started bubbling like a science experiment. The key lime bars didn't turn out too well.

But I really did not want to use two entire sticks of butter for some cookies, so substitutes it is.

Right here and now, I'm telling you to just use the butter. It's gonna' save you a whole lotta' heartbreak.

Here's what you need;

2 cups flour

1 1/2 cups old  fashioned oats

1 tsps baking soda

1 1/2 tsps ground cinnamon

1 tsps pumpkin pie spice

1/2 tsps salt

1 cup butter, softened

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup canned pumpkin

1 egg

1 tsps vanilla extract

First thing you want to do is preheat your oven to 350 and line a cookie sheet with wax aper.

Mix the flour, oats, baking soda, salt, pumpkin pie spice, and cinnamon. In a bowl, just so we're clear.

Yummy :)

In a seperate bowl, mix the butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar. 

I used vegetable oil as a substitute for the butter, so mine looks different.

Mix in the pumpkin and egg with the butter, brown sugar, and sugar, then mix.

Appetizing.

Mix in the flour mixture.

I was reading through the recipe, and suddenly, I saw two words that got me more excited than I am on Christmas morning.

"Get creative."

OOOHHHH YEEEAAAHHHH!!!!!!!

My family loves almonds, so, pumpkin oatmeal ALMOND cookies!!!!!

I got a couple bags of almonds and crushed them up.

I would get salted almonds for cookies, because non-seasoned almonds actually taste sweet.

Little tip, I put them in little baggies and use a rolling pin to crush them up.

Use the tip of the rolling pin to crush them up even more.

Then put whatever you decided to put in the mix into it.

Mix it up, then put the mixture on the cookie sheet in rounded table spoons.

I find it  troublesome when a recipe calls for a rounded tablespoon. Your definition of rounded and my definintion of rounded could be on two opposite ends of the rounded spectrum. Also, I find that when I get a "rounded tablespoon" it is equivalent to two tablespoons :/

But anyway, rounded tablespoon.

Again, I HIGHLY suggest just using the butter. Yours will look different (perhaps more delicious).

Put them in the oven for 13 minutes, pull them out, and bam-shazzam, yummy cookies :)

These, sadly, are what mine looked like.

Not very pretty, but they sure do look "healthy".

Oh, and here's a little laugh for you. I figured the wax paper wasn't really doing anything, so I decided to just do a batch without it.

The wax paper was important.
 

But the boys thought they were still delicious.

All in all, I call this a half success. Maybe I didn't get high scores in the pretty category, but they tasted good. In the end, that's better than nothing!