Oatmeal Coconut Surprise Cookies

I’ve been slowly settling into my new apartment and new city. I hence felt a need to bake cookies to put in the common room of my building.  My blog fliers are hung all over the complex, and so it’s only courteous to give everyone a taste of what they’re looking at, right?

So, I was thinking about the dieters who do strict calorie counts when I was making this cookie. Cookies are a tough thing to count because they generally are packed with add-ins like chocolate chips, dried fruits, and nuts, and you can never be sure how much of each is in each cookie. So, here’s my tip to fix that: choose an add-in and make each cookie around that one item. For example, my oatmeal coconut surprise cookies each have a coconut Hershey’s Kiss tucked inside, which give them tons of exciting flavor!

If you’re like me and you happen to stock up on all of the special edition holiday Kiss flavors and keep your freezer packed with them, then this is perfect for you! The coconut ones come out every spring, so they’re about to be released again. You can use your favorite Kiss flavor, but the coconut ones go perfectly in my oatmeal coconut dough!

½ cup butter substitute (whatever soft butter substitute you prefer)

½ cup unsweetened applesauce

1 cup Splenda

½ cup brown sugar

2 eggs

2 Tbs. unsweetened almond milk (or “milk” of your choice, or water)

1 tsp.  baking soda

½ tsp. salt

1 tsp. vanilla extract

½ tsp. cinnamon

2 cups flour (I used 1 and ½ cups whole wheat flour + ½ cup unbleached a.p. flour)

3 cups old fashioned oats

1/3 cup unsweetened coconut flakes

42 coconut Hershey’s Kisses (or your favorite Kisses)

~Preheat oven to 375 degrees F and line baking sheets with parchment paper (or silicone mats).

~In your mixing bowl, combine butter substitute, applesauce, Splenda and brown sugar and mix for 2-3 min, until creamy and well combined. Add eggs one at a time. Then add vanilla and cinnamon and mix well. Then, add milk and mix. Lastly, add the dry ingredients (baking soda, salt, flours, oats, and coconut) mix until the ingredients are well incorporated and is a homogenous dough.

~Optional: refrigerate for 30 min. The dough is sticky and is easier to manipulate when cold. While it’s refrigerating, unwrap all of your Kisses

~Use a teaspoon to place about a teaspoon of dough into your hand and flatten into a disc shape, place a Kiss onto the disc, and place approximately another teaspoon of dough on top of the Kiss and mold with your fingers until the Kiss is encapsulated. Work quickly because the dough is sticky. Place 12 cookies per cookie sheet. Bake 15-18 min or until golden brown. Let cool, or enjoy right away! Yum!

Strike up a conversation: What’s your favorite flavor of Hershey’s Kisses?