Dog Cookies

From what I read around the blog spectrum, the coolest moms make some sort of baked goods for their little children to have for afternoon snack.  Now, I have a couple issues with this...the first being that I tend to eat 90% of all baked goods I make around here, which is not a good thing when you can no longer do high intensity cardio and you're also trying not to gain a million pounds in a pregnancy.  The second issue is that my children like almost anything sweet or not good for you - so snack time is when I try to force them to eat some sort of fruit or yogurt, etc.

But yesterday, I had a weak moment and found a great recipe for granola bars over at My Baking Addiction that I thought would be fun for Elizabeth and me to make together while Rachel was sleeping.  That's the other thing in the blogosphere...lots of moms cooking with their sweet, well-behaved children.  Most of my tries in this arena have been fails, but there were a lot of dry ingredient stirring in this recipe so I thought I'd give it a try.

Not to bring up the bean incident from a couple weeks ago, but you really can't blame me for being gun shy.

That is, until Elizabeth wound herself into a giant tantrum and put herself to bed for a couple hours (score!!).  *Editor's note...and then proceeded to stay up with mom and dad until 9:30 p.m... no score*

So I decided to make the granola bars myself.  I followed the recipe pretty closely, substituting coconut oil for the vegetable oil and I also added about a 1/2 C of shredded unsweetened coconut and left out the almond slivers.  Not only did these come out incredible, but my house smelled amazing.

I was so stoked to be able to offer the little children in my house these yummy treats for a snack.  And, of course, being three and 20 months and sensing their mommy's excitement, they both took one look at them and turned up their noses.  

"I don't yike dem," Elizabeth said.  "They're dog cookies."

In fact at one point, they were both crying for apples, so I ended up slicing them each one and eating about 10 of the granola bars.  Major loss for the no-sugar goal and also for my waist line.  *sigh*

Oh well, maybe YOUR kids will like them.  Or forget the kids, maybe YOU well and then us dog cookie eaters can unite together.  As it stands, the girls who work the nursery at the Y were thrilled to see me come in with a container of goodies for them. You know, so I didn't eat the entire batch today.

Enjoy!