Lacy, Chocolaty, Healthy Pear Oatmeal Cookies

Dear Turkey,

For when you have a

Lot of pears to use up, or

You can just use canned

Lacy, Chocolaty, Healthy Pear Oatmeal Cookies

(makes about 20)

Ingredients:

- 6 small/med pears, very ripe (soft enough to mash), cut up, no need to peel (or use canned pears, drained)

- 1/3 c maple syrup, honey, or sweetener of your choice (regular sugar or brown sugar should work just fine), or you can omit the sweetener all together

- 2 T whole ground flaxseeds

- 2 T whole chia seeds

- 1 t salt

- 1 t cinnamon

- 2-3 c oatmeal (I recommend quick or 5-minute, but a longer-cooking kind could work too)

- cocoa, for dusting

Instructions:

- Mash the pears and the sweetener (I used maple syrup and I highly recommend it). It's okay if there are some chunks and some bigger, slice-sized pieces of skin -- these will cook up nicely.

- Stir in the flax, chia, cinnamon, salt, and enough oatmeal to make a scoop-able dough (this will depend on how juicy your pears are and what kind of oatmeal you're using). Let stand 5-10 minutes if you want the chia and flax to gel it up a bit before you scoop out the cookies. 

- Cover 2 baking sheets with parchment and make 10-12 flat cookies on each sheet. They won't really spread out while baking.

- Sprinkle the cookies generously w/cocoa. Don't be afraid to make a nice layer of cocoa, even though some of it will fall off after the cookies are baked.

- Bake at 425 F for 20-35 minutes. I baked mine until the bottoms were nice and brown and the cookies were getting a little crunchy/lacy on the edges, but you can make a chewier cookie (in which case you could spread them out less on the sheet before baking), or even bake them longer into more of a sweet cracker. These freeze well.

Enjoy,

Tofu