Yes, I’ve been a little bit slack about posting since right before Thanksgiving, so to make up for it I will be blogging cookie recipes for the next 5 days, to give you some ideas for your upcoming holiday baking.

I’m so excited to share this first recipe for Dark Chocolate Oatmeal Lace Cookies, which I found on Gina Homolka’s Skinnytaste blog (http://www.skinnytaste.com/). If you’re not familiar with her site, I recommend you check it out — she has lots of delicious low-fat recipes. These cookies are crisp and chewy, and I love the dark chocolate filling, but you can use milk chocolate if you prefer. The only thing I changed ingredient-wise was that I used 2% milk instead of 1%, and orange blossom honey instead of regular honey. Plus a bit more chocolate, of course.

Also, the original recipe calls for using two baking sheets lined with Silpats or parchment paper, but I used my large Pampered Chef bar pan instead. It was the first time I’ve made cookies on it and it lived up to its reputation for baking the cookies perfectly, without having to worry about the bottoms becoming too brown or burned. Love, love, love! Take a look at these beauties, which look exactly the same on top as on the bottom.

According to the Skinnytaste website, each cookie is only 68 calories, so you won’t have to worry about filling up Santa and weighing down his sleigh!

Ingredients

• ½ cup sifted all-purpose flour
• ½ cup granulated sugar
• ½ teaspoon cinnamon
• ¼ teaspoon baking powder
• Pinch of salt
• ½ cup old-fashioned oats
• ¼ cup butter, melted
• 2 tablespoons milk (I used 2%)
• 2 tablespoons honey (I used orange blossom)
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 3 oz. dark chocolate, melted

Preparation

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Combine flour, sugar, cinnamon, baking powder, salt and oats.

Place the melted butter, milk, honey and vanilla extract in the bowl of a stand mixer and beat until smooth.

Slowly add the flour mixture to the mixer bowl, a bit at a time, until thoroughly blended.

Drop 1 level teaspoon of batter onto the bar pan leaving a couple of inches of space in between, for a total of 12 cookies. The cookies will spread during baking. If you only have one pan, you will need to repeat this step.

Bake for 10 minutes or so. Let the cookies cool on the bar pan for a couple of minutes and then transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely.

Spread one cookie with a thin layer of the melted chocolate and add another cookie on top to make a sandwich. Repeat.

Serve with a big glass of cold milk!

Bon appétit!

Eat, drink and be merry!

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