Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

A huge part of my workout motivation is all of the delicious healthy food that I get to make to go along with it. I live for my two over easy eggs on a bed of spinach and rocket and avocado toast in the morning. It gives me so much energy to get my workout for the day over with super early, which ends up making my mindset (and day) so much more productive!

I’m still doing Kayla Itsines’ BBG program (I’m on Week 4 now after the 4 weeks of pre-training) and she stresses in her diet guide the importance of a diet balance and a cheat meal. It isn’t a cheat day or a cheat weekend but just one food that you’ve been craving and have to have. Since you’re working for it, you should have it!

I totally agree with this mindset (though my sweet tooth guides me to eat a lot more cheat meals than I should) but I’ve pretty much cut out all sorts of junk food and candy. My fridge is full of veggies and I barely eat bread anymore! But for some reason, I’ve been craving some gooey delicious chocolate chip cookies – and this recipe really came through!

Let’s Get Started:

1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup light brown sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
3 cups rolled oats
1 ½ cups chocolate chips
Shredded Coconut (optional)
Cranberries (Optional)

Let’s Get Cookin’:

Heat oven to 350*. Beat butter until creamy. Add sugars and beat until fluffy, about 3 minutes. (I hand beat and it takes about the same time!) Beat in eggs one at a time. Mix flour, salt, baking powder and cinnamon together. Stir in flour mixture into the butter-sugar mixture. Stir in oats and chocolate chips.

Use a tablespoon to create balls of dough and place on parchment paper covered cookie sheets. Bake until cookie edges turn golden brown, 22 to 25 minutes. (The bake time differs based on the number of cookies you place per sheet. I baked cookies 7-8 at a time and only baked them for 12 minutes until they were golden brown.) Let cool before serving.

Let’s Get Creative:

I was in a decorative mood when baking these cookies and wanted to add all of the delicious ingredients I had conveniently in my cabinets. Since not everyone likes coconut I decided to make some personalized cookies by melting chocolate in the microwave for a minute and drizzling onto some cookies. I then used shredded coconut and cranberries to decorate! Yum.