Millet and fruit chewies

  

As we become acquainted, you will find that I try to offer as much flexibility as possible in recipes, because I've become painfully aware of how difficult it is to manoeuver around allergies in this prepackaged, preprocessed, additive-laden world we live in. I like this recipe because you can do so much with it, and if you don't have your heart set on 'cookies', you will find these strangely satisfying. And there's no refined sugar in it.

If you're reading this in the Middle East, get a jar of Date Honey. It's amazing, great poured right onto pancakes, used as a sweetener (rule of thumb: when substituting honey for refined sugar, use only half as much -- when using Date Honey, use just a tad over half). I'm hopeful that a local Lebanese grocery store in the rest of the world will have such a wonderful thing. No palate should be deprived.

Millet and Fruit Chewies

Preheat oven to 350 deg. F, i think it's around 170 deg. Celcius.

3 ripe bananas
2c. Basic Moist-Style Millet
1/2 c. millet flour
1/2 c. raisins, soaked in warm water five minutes to make soft
1/2 c. dates, chopped
2 Tbs. honey (optional, if you choose to use 1c raisins instead of the dates, use the honey)
1/3 c. oil (use a good one like olive, peanut, coconut. don't use hydrogenated veggie oil!)
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. nutmeg, cardamom, or what have you
1 tsp. vanilla flavour
1 Tbs. arrowroot powder

Toss it all in the food processor, blend until, well, blended... let sit 15 mins. Drop cookie method, 1" balls, onto non-stick cookie sheet, bake until golden and still soft in the middle, about 15 - 18 mins.

These will always be chewy, but are great. I'd add ground almonds or chopped almonds for even more protein, but my kid's school doesn't allow nuts. I bet you could use 1/2 c. shredded raw apples in there, instead of the dates or raisins.

I wouldn't recommend using all raisins in this, as it turns out rather tart. That being said, I wasn't using Sunkist brand raisins, and it could just be that my golden raisins weren't sweet. who knows? a little bit of honey and they are just fine. Tasty, even.

Next adventure: Amaranth-peanut butter cookies.