Honey Oat Pancookies

These egg and dairy free cookies have no refined sugar and are great fun for kids to make and eat. They look and act like cookies but you bake 'em in a frying pan. Our 4 year-old can make them start to finish (with adult supervision, of course).

-Alan Wagener

• 3 cups oatmeal, ground in a flour mill, seed mill, or blender.
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1/4 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 4 tsp. vanilla extract
• water

First grind the oatmeal into flour using a seedmill, blender or flour grinder. (Aaron loves grinding the oatmeal in our hand-cranked flour mill. Oats are soft and they grind easily - it's just the right level of difficulty for him.) Put the flour in a bowl and mix in the other dry ingredients.

Now pour in the oil. Mix it with your hands, rubbing it into the flour till it's uniformly mixed. Now add just enough water to make a dough.

Make the dough into golfball sized balls. Lay each one between two layers of plastic (a clean, used plastic bag works fine) and press them flat, about 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick.

Bake in a lightly greased frying pan (cast iron, if you have it) over medium heat until brown then flip and bake the other side. If you do this with your child, make sure he or she is well-versed in working at the stove and watch like a hawk to make sure he or she is safe. This is a good learning-to-cook-at-the-stove activity because it's fast, rewarding, and there are no hot liquids to worry about.

Eat the cookies warm or whenever you like.