What's Baking in the Barbershop?!: Peanut Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Balls

Sometimes you just need to not turn on your oven. Know what I mean? Perhaps the weather is really hot out and the thought of turning on a hot oven is unbearable. Or perhaps you're in a time crunch and you know that making something with the oven just won't fit into your schedule. Or perhaps you are trying to conserve energy (it is Earth Day this weekend after all!), and one way to do that is to ignore your oven for a bit.

A great result I had recently of not turning on my oven is these peanut butter oatmeal chocolate chip cookie dough balls. And yes, that's quite a long name for such a little treat. :)

I saw these delectable looking treats over on the awesome blog, Keep It Sweet. In fact, she encouraged making these little gems in honor of Earth Day and conserving energy. Perfect! Yesterday evening, Mike and I were heading to our friends' house to meet their new baby (!!!) and bring dinner, but I didn't have a lot of time to devote to making a dessert. Keep It Sweet's recipe for these cookie dough balls came at just the right time! I had all the ingredients on hand and whipped these up in no time at all.

The ingredients I used are listed below. I changed the recipe a bit... The original recipe calls for applesauce but I didn't have any on hand, so I used low-fat vanilla yogurt instead. It worked great! Also, the recipe calls for whole wheat pastry flour, but I just used regular whole wheat flour. And finally, instead of mini semi-sweet chocolate chips, I used regular sized dark chocolate chips.

Ingredients:

-3/4 cup whole wheat flour

-1 cup rolled oats

-1/2 cup peanut butter

-1/3 cup maple syrup (I used grade B)

-1/4 cup low-fat vanilla yogurt

-1 tsp. vanilla extract

-1/4 cup dark chocolate chips

Instructions:

Line a jelly roll pan or cookie sheet with wax paper. Whisk together the flour and oats in a medium bowl and set aside. Use an electric mixer to beat the peanut butter, maple syrup, yogurt, and vanilla together until well-combined. Stir in the flour mixture until just combined, and then stir in the chocolate chips.

Using a cookie dough scoop or a spoon, scoop about two tablespoons of dough and roll into a ball with hands. Repeat until all the dough is used. It should make about 16 balls. Place balls on wax paper and let set in the fridge or freezer until firm. It shouldn't take too long for them to firm up (I put mine in the freezer for 20 minutes and that worked great!).