Allie has made some of the best-tasting cookies I’ve ever experienced.

**This post originally appeared on YinMomYanMom.com**

I’m on a mission to eliminate pre-made, store-bought, processed-foods-that-I-could-be-making-fresh-myself, from my kids’ diet.  Control freak that I am, it just makes me uneasy to hand over a chocolate chip cookie when I have no idea what has gone into it (partially hydrogenated?  Soy lecithin?  High fructose? ).

My kids, like most, are cookie monsters.  If I let them, which I hate to admit I sometimes do, they would eat cookies with every meal.  When my little one was around 18 months or so, he would literally wake up asking for cookies.  The word “cookie” made up probably 40% of his conversation on any given day.  So, needless to say, I want to be able to feel good about the cookies he eats.

I’ve named this recipe “Cookie Robots” after the happy accidents in the movie Despicable Me (Henry calls it “wiggle me, lol”).  One of my kids favorite movies and they love the idea of cookies that come to life all evil and mechanical.  They really do come out looking like the cookies in the movie and I’m sure they are healthier for their little bodies with the whole grain oats, dried cranberries, whole wheat flour, etc.

Ingredients:
7 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened or cut into small cubes
¼ cup brown sugar
¼ cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
¼ cup all purpose flour
½ cup 100% whole wheat flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon kosher salt (skip this if you don’t have unsalted butter)
1 cup old fashioned oats
1 cup dried cranberries or other dried fruit
6 oz (about half a regular sized bag) good quality chocolate chips (I like Ghirardelli 60% cacao)

Preheat your oven to 325 degrees.

Put the butter and the sugars in the mixer and beat until fluffy.

Add your egg and vanilla, mix and then scrape the bottom of the bowl so you know it’s all mixed up really good.  If you have one of those bowl scraper paddle attachments you can skip this step, but I don’t have one of those.

Throw in the flours, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt and mix until blended.

Mix in the oats, and then add the fruit and chocolate and mix again.  I’ve also added nuts which are delicious (but unfortunately you can’t put them in your kids’ school lunches), and also goldfish pretzels, which give an amazing salty crunch which is perfect for when you have PMS.

Cookie scoop or spoon them onto baking sheets and bake for 10-12 minutes or until they are getting a little golden around the edges but are still soft and moist and comforting inside.

Stuff yourselves with as many as you can while they are still warm and then put the rest in an airtight container in your snack cabinet after they have cooled.  This recipe makes about 2 dozen cookies which will probably be gone before they have a chance to get stale, but if your family is a bunch of ravenous cookie monsters, you might be better off doubling the recipe.