Breakfast Muffin Tops

One of the most difficult parts of my day is feeding my two year old breakfast.  He just doesn't like anything.  Sometimes he'll eat toast, sometimes he'll eat some egg, sometimes he'll eat a pre-packaged cereal bar...  But a lot of the time, he settles on hotdog.  Or a bottle of milk.  Or, nothing at all.

He's on a bit of a cookie kick right now.  He cried for about two hours for a cookie the other morning, and would not touch anything else.

So, I googled 'breakfast cookie', because, hey, it seems that everything exists these days.

Guess what?  They do.  In abundance.  Most of them are not a true cookie though; they're more cake-y in texture and seem to be refereed to as 'muffin tops'.  Basically, you could just make them as muffins, but, we're feeding toddlers, so the cookie size is a little more fitting.
I found a couple recipes that seemed simple enough and had enough healthy sounding ingredients to sound passable for breakfast food.  I didn't love either recipe on their own, so I sort of mushed them together, made a couple of changes, and came up with my own.

Amy's Breakfast Muffin Tops
Dry Ingredients
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
2 cups rolled oats
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 tbsp milled flax seed
2 tbsp grated coconut
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2 tbsp pumpkin seeds
2 tbsp sunflower seeds
2 tbsp dried currants*
*These 3 ingredients were actually trail mix I had that I picked the larger nuts out of - I didn't want someone to be surprised by biting into a whole almond!  It was about a 1/3 of a cup in the end.  Next time, I'd aim for 1/2 a cup and probably stick more to dried fruit - craisins or cherries would be good.  But use whatever is in your cupboard.
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1/2 cup chocolate chips
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon (I don't really like cinnamon, so I didn't add too much)
1/2 tsp salt

Wet Ingredients
1 cup milk
1/2 cup melted butter
1/2 cup apple sauce (or one fruit cup container of apple sauce)
1 apple, grated, with the skin left on
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla

Mix your dry ingredients.  Mix your wet ingredients.  Pour the wet into the dry; mix 'em all together.  It'll look like thick muffin batter.  Drop spoonfulls of it onto a greased cookie sheet and bake for 10 minutes at 350F.
Makes about 24 cookies


Now, here's the bad:  They taste AWESOME warm, (someone suggested warming them up, crumbling in a bowl, and covering in milk), but they're 160 calories each!  Remember, this is supposed to be toddler breakfast food, not your 4-cookie afternoon snack!
Here's the good: They actually contain some good stuff like fibre (1.6g), protein (3g), calcium, iron, and some vitamins like A and B6.

Granted, they're still just a cookie/muffin.  But really, we're talking about breakfast here - that meal of the day where people find anything from a half grapefruit to a plate of maple-syrup-drenched-pancakes acceptable.

So far, they pass the adult test, but they haven't had a chance to pass the toddler test yet.  IF they do though, I'll definitely be making them again.