The base cookie recipe, minus any add-in components, is pretty plain by design. It contains all of the core ingredients that definite the majority of the nutritional profile of the cookie. The variations and add-ins all start from here and add key flavours and textures.

The base recipe is pretty straightforward, though there are a few important notes to be aware of, especially if you're trying to meet or adjust to specific dietary restrictions.

Before we get too far into the making (and adapting) of this recipe, I want to note that these breakfast cookies freeze very well, making them ideal for keeping on hand or prepping for school/work lunches.  Personally speaking, I also quite like the texture they take on when they're still a teeny bit frozen.

Oats -  I used standard rolled oats to make these cookies.  You could use quick oats too, but note that they tend to be a bit softer and less chewy.  They'll also hydrate faster, which means that you won't need to rest the dough for as long.

Nut Butter -  Any nut butter will work here, as will allergy-friendly seed butters (e.g. sunflower butter).  I've made these with unsweetened pure peanut butter, almond butter, and sunflower butter.  There are minor flavour variations, but no noticeable difference in the preparation or baking processes.  I prefer to use pure nut butters without added salt, sugar, or emulsifiers.  You can use conventional emulsified nut butters, but bear in mind that it will add a little extra sugar and salt to your base recipe.  That being said, the difference is pretty small.  Adjust as you see fit.

NOTE: If you want to make these as a healthy and convenient school snack, I recommend using a seed butter (e.g. sunflower).  This will keep the recipe peanut free.  Do note, however, that some of the add-ins contain tree nuts, sesame, and other relatively common potential allergens.

Sugars - Long story short: don't concern yourself too much with the type of sugar you use.  At the scale of an individual cookie, honey, maple syrup, and brown sugar are virtually identical from a nutritional standpoint.  Each breakfast cookie only ends up with 1/2 teaspoon of sugar added, which means that the already small differences in calories, sugar, glycemic index, and micronutrients between the different types of sguar become almost nonexistent.  I suggest using whichever one you prefer to use, and/or whichever one you think better compliments the other flavours in the cookies.  While brown sugar is obviously a solid and the other two ingredients are liquids, the difference on the consistency of the batter is basically zero.

For information on using artificial or alternative sweeteners, see below.

Can I use artificial sweeteners?

You can, but I wouldn't bother.  As mentioned above, each breakfast cookie ends up with about 1/2 teaspoon of added sugar (brown sugar, maple syrup, honey, etc.).  That's roughly 2 grams, and around 6-8 calories.  The bananas used in the base recipe add around 2 grams more sugar per cookie. And, of course, you have to take into account any sugar from the added components in the individual variations.  You could use a baking-friendly 1:1 non-sugar sweetener, but the impact on the overall nutritional profile of the cookies will be pretty minimal - especially given that you'll still be using the bananas.

Can I add protein powder?

Short answer: probably. You could safely add a 1/4 cup (roughly equivalent to a single 32 gram scoop) of protein powder to the batter.  This will end up contributing around an additional 1 gram of protein per cookie, as well as ~5 calories. Note that you may need to add a little bit of additional liquid to the batter, or reduce the oat flour by about 1 tbsp to compensate for the protein powder.

To understand what kind of difference this will make, let's look at a real-life scenario.  If you're running out the door and you decide to grab two of the original chocolate cherry cookies for a quick breakfast, you're getting 10 grams of protein (roughly 20% of the daily recommended intake given a 2000 calorie diet). If you've made the cookies with whey powder, you'll get about 12 grams of protein, or 24%. It's up to you to decide if that's a big enough difference to make it worth experimenting with protein powder.

Finally, note that different types of protein powder (whey, soy, pea, etc.) may contribute somewhat different flavours and/or textures to your cookies.  Avoid protein powders with added flavourings or fillers.

This breakfast cookies call for both oats and oat flour. This gives you the option of adjusting the ratios of the two ingredients, which in turn allows you to change the texture of the cookies.

As written, the recipe is heavier on whole oats (2 cups) than on oat flour (0.5 cups).  This results in cookies with a more granola-bar-esque texture, full of larger and chewier oat pieces.  Decreasing the oats to 1 cup and upping the oat flour to 1.5 cups results in a softer, more even texture with fewer crumbly bits.  Both are good, but preferences in this respect tend to be quite personal.  It is worth noting that the batter made with more oat flour will hydrate a little faster, thereby shortening the prep time slightly.

If you have a blender or food processor, you don't need to buy oat flour.  Instead, just blitz some rolled oats until they're reduced to a fine flour and you're good to go.

This is where we get to the fun stuff.  The variations given here yield four very different cookies - and there's plenty of room for experimentation. I encourage you to try your own variations and additions by starting with the same base cookie. If you have a combination you particularly love, I hope you'll share it in the comments below!

Note that the nutritional summaries given below are for a single breakfast cookie (1/24th of the total recipe).  This isn't a lot of food - I would say it's akin to a hearty (and fairly filling) snack.  If you're thinking about having these as more of a full-on meal replacement, you're probably going to want to eat two.

These are my favourite variation of the four, in part because I'm an absolute sucker for dark chocolate and sour cherries. I love the bittersweet character of dark chocolate, but if you're more of a milk chocolate fan, you could use that here. The calorie difference is more-or-less a wash, but the sources of these calories differ; dark chocolate has more fat, while milk chocolate has more sugar. It's also worth noting that I used a very dark cocoa powder here, which gives these cookies the deep black-brown colour. A lighter cocoa powder will deliver lighter coloured cookies.

I don't know exactly what it is about coconut and almonds that makes them work so nicely together, but hey, I'm not complaining. Coconut does dry things out a little, so a bit of extra moisture is added to the batter in this variation. I also find that the flavour of the almonds alone can get a little lost, so I like to use a bit of almond extract to help perk it up. If you don't want to use almond extract, you don't have to, but expect the flavour of the coconut to be a bit more up-front.

Pecans and cranberries. Pe-cran. Does the name need work? Yeah, probably. But the cookies are more than ready to go.

Tangy-sweet cranberries pair perfectly with pecans - though I have to say, I think these are even better if you use candied pecans.  Yes, it adds a touch more sugar, but it's a pretty small amount per cookie, and the extra flavour of caramel really makes everything pop.  The not-so-secret ingredient is orange zest, which really plays beautifully with the cranberry, adding a bright, distinctive flavour element.  Sesame seeds add more protein and a nice nutty flavour too.

"Mexican" isn't the most descriptive flavour name in the whole world, but it is a) a lot shorter than listing all the ingredients, and b) pretty darned accurate. These cookies feature lots of tasty, nutty seeds (pumpkin and sesame), cacao nibs, cinnamon, sesame seeds, and bits of hard caramel. All these ingredients are much loved in Mexican cooking, and several are native to the region. There's also vanilla in all the cookies, which is actually Mexican too. Hurra por las galletas.

A quick note - you can buy hard caramel, but it's really easy to make yourself.  This method from Food 52 is a good, basic overview.  If you don't want to bother with hard caramel, you can use any other ingredient that gives you a similar sweet/caramel flavour.