These tasty chewy cookies have more fruit and nuts then sugar, flour, or butter. They are not hard to make, and I think they taste better then any  other cookies. Only use natural ingredients. Organic ingredients make these even tastier and more healthy. This recipe is adapted from the Joy of Cooking.

Florentine superfood cookie recipe from what i did to survive on Vimeo.

Florentine Recipe

Preheat oven to 350

Mix
1 1/4 cups of mixed dried organic fruit, such as raisins, blueberries, cranberries, cherries, apricots, figs, apricots.  Do not use dried fruits that have added sulfur.
1/2 cup of whole grain flour

Put in a blender, along with:
4 tablespoons of Brown Sugar
4 tablespoons of honey
1/2 cup of walnuts or chopped almonds, sunflower seeds
1/8th of a teaspoon of salt
1/2 teaspoon of vanilla

Blend until the fruits and nuts are in 1/4″ pieces
Add 4 tablespoons of butter
And re blend until the pieces are about 1/8″

Form dough into 1″ balls and place on buttered cookie sheet. Flatten to 2 1/2″  to 3″ patties. Bake for 7-8 minutes. Allow to cool for a few minutes, then carefully remove to a wire rack.

Optional (for chocolate lovers)
melt 4 ounces of dark chocolate. in a metal bowl over boiling water.
carefully spread the chocolate on the bottoms of the cookies. The chocolate will harden when the cookies cool completely.

How these cookies work to fight disease:
Every fruit seems to have some anti disease properties
apricots – high in  lyposene, beta-carotene A & fiber
blueberries -  rich in anthocyanins and ellagic acid vitamin c
cranberries - anti oxidants, kill cancer cells
cherries - – rich source of healthy antioxidants
-contain queritrin (which is a potent anticancer agent)
- also contain ellagic acid, which experts believe is one of the most useful compounds for    cancer prevention helping to repair damaged cells in the body
-also contains perillyl alcohol (POH), which is very effective in reducing the occurrence of all types of cancer. Stopping the spread of cancerous cells by depriving them of the crucial proteins they require in order to grow. (Cooking the berries destroys some of the antioxidant qualities)

walnuts – omega 3 fatty acids, anti oxidants – reduced breast cancer in mice

butter -  Much debated.  It might become the next big food fad.  The saturated fats in butter have strong anti-cancer properties. Butter is rich in short and medium chain fatty acid chains that have strong anti-tumor effects.  Butter also contains conjugated linoleic acid which gives excellent protection against cancer. Vitamin A and the anti-oxidants in butter–vitamin E, selenium and cholesterol–protect against cancer as well as heart disease.

chocolate – full of antioxidants

not so good – This recipe has 4 tablespoons of sugar much less then most recipes.  Sugar is not healthy, so if you don’t consider reducing the added sugar by half. There is natural sugar in the fruit, and too much of this is not good either.

These are the most healthy cookies ever. Don’t eat any other cookies and don’t eat too many!