These healthy cookies are full of oats and walnuts and free of refined sugar or butter – perfect for snacking or to satisfy a sweet tooth. 🙂

When I was a kid, I always thought of cookies as a dessert or special treat.  They’re one of those delicious things that you would love to eat every day, but you can’t because someone called Mom won’t let you.  (And she has a very good reason by the way.)  Once I grew up and moved out, I thought to myself, “Hey, I can have dessert whenever I want it now and no one can stop me!”  That concept sounds great only in theory.  I mean, I could eat regular cookies all the time if I wanted to, but it wouldn’t exactly be good for my health.  So, I was a very happy adult after I came up with some healthier versions of cookies that are delicious and can be eaten as good-for-you snacks!

Jump to Recipe!

It’s nice to have a variety of both healthy and not healthy “dessert” options that taste great, so you can go for the really sweet treats every once in awhile and then enjoy the more nutritious ones in between.  I am the owner of a serious sweet tooth, so having healthy dessert recipes available is helpful in keeping me from being tempted to eat too much of the other.

Enter these Oatmeal Walnut Snack Cookies!  I actually came up with this recipe several months ago and really enjoyed the result, but then the pictures kind of sat forgotten on my computer.  I was looking through my recent culinary adventures today and trying to decide what to share when I saw these cookies.

“Hey!  It’s about time I posted that snack cookie recipe!”   🙂

These healthy cookies are quick (requiring about 35 minutes) and easy to make, and only require one bowl for mixing.

By the way, I have learned that stacking food in over the top ways and taking pictures is “a thing”.  (Maybe I’m way behind the times, but I did not know about food stacking until recently.)  Some of the cooks/bakers I follow on Instagram possess an ability to layer cookies, cakes, pancakes, and smoothies in ways that never cease to amaze me.  I would have food splattered all over my floor if I tried to balance a stack of ten pancakes (topped with fruit and yogurt) on a fork.

Despite my lack of coordination, I had to give cookie stacking a try at least once.  So, to my imaginary audience I present…  (Kidding.  I don’t have an imaginary audience.  Or maybe I do.  Whatever.)

*drumroll*

Ta da!

For the record, you have no idea how long it took me to get those cookies to stay like that.  I was carefully working on them early one Saturday morning when my husband wandered downstairs and just stopped and stared.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m balancing these cookies.”

*silence*

“Are you judging me?  I hear you judging me.”

It might have been easier had I put the largest cookie on the bottom, but it was all lumpy and I didn’t think the others would stay balanced on top of that one.

There you have it folks.  Katherine’s one moment of food stacking glory.  It was brief and will quite possibly remain that way as I have lived most of my life as an uncoordinated klutz.  People say practice makes perfect, but I’m not sure how much time I’m willing to dedicate to this pursuit when I could be doing other things, like baking even more cookies.  Also, whoever came up with the “practice makes perfect” phrase obviously hadn’t met me or they would have said something entirely different.  For example, “You’ll practice and practice and eventually maybe get a little bit better, and then you’ll randomly run into a tree.”

No, I’m not going to tell you any stories of me running into trees.  It was more of a figure of speech.  *cough*  I do have a great story about one of my brothers running into a tree though while he was chasing me on his bicycle.  We’ll save that one for another time…

😉

~K in the Kitchen