The Preamble:
Eating on longer rides is important, when you’re out for 1-2 hours, you may not need to refuel on the ride, but for 3hrs or longer, I find I definitely need to eat.
In the world of aerobic activity, carbs are your friend – they’re the main energy burned while riding (especially as intensity increases), and are your best fuel source to keep going and preventing the dreaded bonk. Bars, gels and energy cubes are a great option, and often my choice, but it’s nice to have a bit of variety as well. It’s not a great feeling when you need to eat, and are sick of the food you have.
My all-time favourite bar was the Nature’s Path Orange Chocolate Optimum bar, was oat-based and the consistency was nearly that of a cookie. (I’ve actually kept one as a souvenir, the Best Before date is Sept 10, 2011!) When they vanished from the market, I got a bit creative and started bringing cookies along, a top favourite being these from Sweets from the Earth (which conveniently come prepacked in 3s!)
I’d been working on ‘the perfect’ chocolate chip cookie as a side project, and finally settled on a recipe that I really liked. I realized this could be a good candidate for a ride cookie, and with some tweaks developed this iteration.
The Recipe:
First, pre-heat the oven to 375F. This is warmer than a lot of cookie recipes, and results in a bit more of a caramelized texture that really stands out. I strongly encourage investing in a separate oven thermometer as well, typically ovens are quite bad, with mine set to 300F, it’s nearly 400F!!
For ingredients (preferably organic and fair trade), begin with:
1/2 c coconut oil chunks
1 1/4 c brown sugar
2 tsp vanilla
1/4 c soy milk (or any non-dairy milk, or even water)
1/4c strawberry jam (or other jam, if not too strong a flavour)
With the coconut oil, just go with loose ‘chunks’, don’t compress or anything. You’ll want to melt the coconut oil – put in a bowl and either keep on the ‘open’ burner (if your stovetop has), or a minute or two in the oven while it’s warming up. Then mix in the rest of the ingredients.
Then add:
2 1/4 c flour
1 tsp b soda
1/2 tsp salt
2c chocolate chips (I use a bag of Camino)
Mix in the first three into the wet ingredients above, then when well mixed, add in the chocolate chips.
Using a tablespoon or ice cream scoop, dollop out balls of cookie onto a baking sheet (I recommend a layer of parchment paper), and back for 9-10 minutes (or even more, just don’t let them burn!)
With any luck you should have a nice batch of cookies! I’ll pop one (or more, be sure to share!) in a resealable bag and pocket for my ride.
This cookie dough is totally safe to snack on, without any animal ingredients.
The number of calories per cookie will be hard to estimate, since they’re likely different sizes, but I’d guess 200-250 per cookie, and most is carbohydrates.
Happy riding and snacking!
Pro tip: for my favourite cookie recipe, you’ll want to simply make sure there’s a full 1/2c of the coconut oil, the goal with this recipe is to reduce the amount of fat, which isn’t as useful when riding.
