I made my first batch of these blackstrap molasses cookies over a month ago, intending to devote a blog post to them. They got eaten before I could photograph them. Over the following weeks I baked somewhere between four and six more batches, each of which met the same fate as the first. Looks like this recipe is a keeper. I love these cookies. A lot. They aren’t even intended to be the kind of cookies you can’t keep your hands off. They’re intended to be healthy, which they are, but they’re also super delicious. Blackstrap molasses was the starting point for these cookies. Whenever I post a recipe that calls for molasses I try to include a note not to use blackstrap, because it usually doesn’t work. I love blackstrap molasses and whenever I’ve tried subbing it for regular old molasses I’ve ended up with a sad pile of char. I almost always get comments or emails from a few of you, asking why you can’t use blackstrap. I hear you. Like I said, I love the stuff too. That’s why I went and crafted this recipe specifically around blackstrap molasses. I call these breakfast cookies because they really are healthy enough to eat for breakfast (even if I mostly eat them as an evening snack). How healthy? No refined sugar, oil, flour, gluten, or pretty much anything you might want to avoid. An overripe banana (which you can’t taste), along with peanut butter and blackstrap give them a rich, creamy texture, while a base of rolled oats makes it feel like you’re eating an oatmeal cookie…which I guess technically you are, just a really health one that’s totally appropriate for breakfast. Rock. The other nice thing about using oats as a base is that it lets you create a totally flourless cookie. A while back I had success using oat flour in place of wheat, but this is the first time I use all whole oats, which worked out really nice because it allowed the creamy richness of the peanut butter-blackstrap mixture to shine through. I used Bob’s Red Mill rolled oats. Bob’s oats are my favorite, and Bob was nice enough to supply me with the oats I used for this recipe. I used the regular old-fashioned variety of rolled oats, but they’ve also got gluten-free if that’s how you take your oats.
