Day 19 Pumpkin Challenge - Pumpkin Breakfast Biscuits

Like many of us, my husband likes to have a little something sweet to eat with his cup of tea. As such, I usually have a batch of flapjacks or some homemade biscuits on the go. However, recently he has been trying to eat more healthily and he asked me to find some recipes for "healthier" biscuits.

On might argue that you just shouldn't eat a biscuit if you are trying to be healthy but that can be very difficult, requiring a good deal of will power, and finding something to stop the belly rumbles that hits the spot with the same degree of satisfaction and convenience can be tricky. So, I think a healthier biscuit is probably a good way to go, especially if there are ingredients within it that are beneficial to eat, such as nuts and seeds.

So, when I came across a recipe for pumpkin breakfast cookies I decided to give it ago and make it my own. A few minor tweaks and soon I had a batch in the oven cooking. With my experience of making biscuits, I wondered how these ones would come out, as the addition of pumpkin puree mixed with egg was unlikely to make a crisp biscuit and the lack of sugar meant they weren't going to be very sweet.

And so it was. They have a slightly odd soft texture but it isn't unpleasant. Maybe they shouldn't be called biscuits, but then again, they aren't cakes either. They aren't particularly sweet but I actually quite like that. In fact, I like them a lot. 

Being a stickler for routine and boringly predictable, I almost always eat homemade granola for breakfast. I only break from routine on the occasional weekend morning when I fancy whipping up some pancakes or waffles or if I simply haven't had the time to make a fresh batch of granola. So, I'm not the sort of person to eat biscuits for breakfast but I found them absolutely the perfect thing for elevenses. My husband, on the other hand, found them too bland and sandwiched them together with some jam - I feel we still need to work on his commitment to healthy biscuits!

Having worked at an event all day on Sunday, I came home hungry and in need of a snack so together my youngest daughter and I polished off the last of the breakfast cookies. Then it was time for a bath to thaw out my cold bones before dinner. No time to cook a fresh batch of granola, sadly, but I had frozen some pumpkin pancakes recently so I put those into the fridge to thaw overnight. 

This morning I took the pancakes from the fridge and arranged them on a plate to microwave whilst I gathered together the whipped cream and maple syrup but upon removing them from the microwave my nose alerted me that something was wrong. I checked my handwritten label on the pancake bag and sure enough I had reheated savoury pancakes not sweet ones. My stomach protected at the thought of adding maple syrup to slightly curry-flavoured pancakes and I really wasn't in the mood to fry up egg and bacon. Plan B turned out to be toasted homemade bread with raspberry jam so that wasn't too bad but I couldn't help regretting scoffing the last of the breakfast biscuits the night before - just what we all could have done with on a busy Monday morning as my eldest rushed out to a week of mock exams.

Pumpkin Breakfast Biscuit

40g coconut oil, melted

75g honey

110g oats

55g (2 sachets) of Oats So Simple

85g dried cranberries

85g pumpkin seeds

25g ground flaxseed

1 teaspoon mixed spice

Pinch of salt

125g pumpkin puree

2 eggs, beaten

Preheat oven to 180°C and line a large baking sheets. Melt the coconut oil and honey together in the microwave in a small bowl. In a large bowl, mix together the dry ingredients. Add the pumpkin puree and eggs to the oil and honey then stir this into the dry mix. Mix well then use an ice-cream scoop to drop balls of mixture onto the baking sheet. Flatten each one then bake for 15-20 minutes until lightly browned.