Fourth Night of Hanukkah: COCO Cookies

There are a couple shelves in the grocery section of Target that are always full of random things on sale, like pudding mix for 89 cents. Can someone who loves to bake really say no to that? Definitely not. I love when I find good baking ingredients on sale, especially if they are something I wouldn’t ordinarily buy. Then it forces me to come up with a way to use it, which usually leads me to fun new recipes.
Sometimes the stuff on those shelves is just plain weird. Like they couldn’t sell it normally so they had to slash down the price so the product could just get out the door.  Gross hamburger helper, very unpopular soup flavors, or brands of products that no one has ever heard of, ever. But you can’t go wrong with pudding mix. Or coffee. And I even got a huge bottle of margarita mix from that shelf for $5! You see what I’m getting at here, right? It can be hit or miss, but when you get a hit... it’s a good one!
Yesterday you saw what I did with the vanilla pudding mix and today you get to see how I used the chocolate. For the fourth night of Hanukkah baking, I bring you my chocolate coconut oatmeal cookies — the COCO Cookie, if you will. This recipe was inspired by a recipe for no-bake chocolate oatmeal cookies from Aunt Peg’s Recipe Box, but I made it into my own experiment. The chocolate pudding kind of smacks you with a rich flavor that you don’t expect, so it may be kind of hard to believe that they are actually pretty healthy, and very low in fat.
The COCO Cookie2 cups Splenda granulated sugar3/4 cup unsweetened applesauce2/3 cup skim milk1 3.9 oz box instant chocolate pudding mix3 1/2 cups rolled oats1/4 cup unsweetened shredded coconut1/2 tsp vanilla extract
In a large pan, mix together the sugar, applesauce and milk and bring to a boil. Let boil for 2-3 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in the pudding mix, oats, coconut and vanilla. Let stand for a couple minutes until the batter thickens a bit. Scoop cookies onto a baking sheet and bake for about 8 minutes.