Breakfast cookies/bars and ThinkThin bars

LittleKatie13

This is a two part question:
1) Does anyone have a really good breakfast cookie/bar recipe?  I'm sort of getting tired of the smoothies every morning.  I tried Brie's breakfast cookie recipe, but it wasn't quite what I was looking for-maybe something baked.  Looking for oatmeal and protein powder in the recipe, but other suggestions are welcome.

2) What flavors of think thin bars/bites do you like?  I tried the toffee nut bites and while it definitely filled me up, it wasn't super tasty.

TIA!

raynes

I haven't tried breakfast cookies yet, but have been thinking about it.

I was reading up on homemade protein bars a while ago and most people say that baking protein powder denatures the protein and sort of makes it less effective (I think?)  I was going to suggest Brie's, but if you've already tried those, then I have no suggestions.

For making homemade protein bars, I'm thinking about trying these: http://www.stumptuous.com/make-your-own-protein-bars

LittleKatie13

I found a recipe similar to Brie's that uses some apples sauce too, that might help.  When I made it, it was really crumbly and kinda just ehh...  A little horse feed like.  I think I must not have done it right.

TurtlesAllTheWayDown

For the think thin bars, I agree - I'm not a fan of the toffee or peanut butter. I like the minis in the cookies and cream flavor, though.

cac847

I made these a few weeks ago, they're pretty good:

http://www.cookiemadness.net/2008/03/carrot-cake-breakfast-cookies/

There may be some more recipes on that site. For bars, I like the Kashi Crunch bars.

AraDesi

I've been trying recipes for muffins from www.sparkrecipes.com

You can always add protein to recipes (I like to add nuts to the muffin recipes). Like raynes said, heating the protein powder will denature the proteins in it (probably why the protein bar recipe she posted includes freezing instead of baking). Proteins are molecules that wrap around themselves in weird ways, and when you heat/denature a protein it uncoils and your body can't use it the same way anymore.

So if you want to use protein powder, it's probably best to use a recipe like raynes posted. Otherwise you'll want to add protein by adding different ingredients.

diamondx423

in the protein powders/bars the protein is in there to be broken down into its amino acid building blocks for muscle repair/overall health. while proteins do denature when heated, the proteins in the supplements are not designed to act "as is" as enzymes in your body. denaturing them with cooking doesn't make a difference since they're going to be broken down anyway.

LittleKatie13

Thanks for the help ladies!  I'm a little confused about the controversy about baking protein powder making it unusable to the body.  I am a PhD student working on a single protein molecule, so I'm very familiar with heat denaturing proteins (aka the bane of my existence-it means I get to start over purifying my protein a lot), but am unsure of why that would render it useless to the body.  Even if it's unwoven, the amino acids are still present  and in fact many proteins can "renature" when returned to anything around body temperature.  As someone said previously, the body naturally "disassembles" proteins anyway, so why does it matter if it's a long string rather than folded up?  I think I'm going to try baking with it and go by how well it deals with my hunger level.  If it keeps me full as much as the same amount of protein that isn't cooked, then I'm going to think that it still is beneficial.

crnota

I am no help with the breakfast cookie issue.

But my favorite ThinkThin flavor is chunky peanut butter (or is it crunchy peanut butter? something like that). I love anything peanut butter/chocolate, though. I like the brownie flavor, but only if I am having it as a snack, not first thing in the morning...something about brownie taste for breakfast doesn't work for me!

The toffee nut is my least favorite...I think it tastes way too sweet.

I just got 2 new (to me) flavors at Whole Foods- choco covered strawberry and mocha mudslide. Haven't tried them yet, though.