Lactation Cookies

Several friends have had babies in recent weeks and as part of a care package, I baked lactation cookies, which are supposed to help milk production. Do they really help? I don’t know, but the cookies taste good and include some of the same ingredients in beer, which I’m also told encourages milk production. They’re basically oatmeal chip cookies with brewer’s yeast and flax seed meal. Husbands and toddlers like them too.

Most of the recipes found online are very similar. All of the odd ingredients (brewer’s yeast, flax seed meal) I was able to find at my local Whole Foods in the supplements aisle. The recipe makes A LOT of cookies (~70 with the Tablespoon cookie scoop) so I baked half and froze the other half so the new mama could bake the cookies on demand when she had a sugar hankering. My friends requested butterscotch chips but you can use anything, really. The recipe I based my version on also includes dried fruit, which I don’t really like in my cookies, so I skipped that, but its a really adaptable recipe. Per usual, I reduced the sugar. I’ve found that the more my butter is melted/softened, the crispier my cookie. The less it is melted, the more cake-like in texture. I like it somewhere in between. p.s. We’ve been going through a disgusting amount of butter around here lately!