35 Easy Cookie Recipes for Your Post-SHTF Sweet Tooth
In post-SHTF scenarios we have to assume you will be living off your stockpiled supplies, and maybe what you can grow in your survival garden or forage.
As such, these recipes will look at basic ingredients just about everyone should have in their survival supplies, with the addition of some dried fruit and nuts and seeds that you either have stockpiled or can get from your garden or foraging expeditions.
We start with the more unusual foraged recipes that you go out and collect in the fields and woods, then move on to easy 3 to 4 ingredient cookies that everyone should have stockpiled at home, and in the last category an alphabetical list of cookie recipes according to the ingredient(s) you are most likely to have to obtain from your garden, farm or homestead.
FORAGERS COOKIE RECIPES
Aronia berry (aka Chokecherry) Cookies
Chokecherries – named for their bitter astringent taste, are now marketed as Aronia berries.
Native to Eastern North America, the Aronia berries are now being actively planted in the mid-west, but survival homesteaders and native Americans have long appreciated their value as their Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity (ORAC) surpasses that of both blueberries and goji berries. Try this recipe that includes oats.
Cattail Pollen Cookies
So you dutifully foraged for cattail pollen and now you want to use it to make something sweet? Here’s how.
The second recipe in this link allows for the flavor of the pollen to come through.
Dandelion Flower Cookies
Send the kids out to pick fluffy yellow dandelion flowers, show them how to separate the petals from the green part – those bits get composted, and bake these cookies that have oatmeal and honey in them to make them softly chewy. Get the recipe.
Elderberry Jam Cookies
The common elderberry grows in large areas of North America, east of the Rockies, and these cookies will incorporate your foraged elderberries which have been made into jam.
But, they do call for almond flour and coconut flour which can’t be substituted so just make sure these ingredients are in your store-cupboard. Get the recipe.
Saskatoon Berry with Oatmeal Cookies
Saskatoon, or Juneberries, are also known as shadbush and service berry and provide a nice dark fruit to include in cookie recipes. The taste – well, like blueberries – but better. Forage for your own, but beware where you forage – bears love them too!
Many people are planting them on their land and you can reap the sweet harvest in June for around 2 to 3 weeks and preserve that luscious goodness by freezing, drying or turning into jams for use later in the year.
This recipe does call for cinnamon and almond extract in the recipe as well as a mix of brown and white sugar, so check you have these ingredients on hand.
REALLY SIMPLE COOKIES
Three Ingredient Cookies
Just three ingredients, butter, flour, and sugar yield these crisp cookies. Jazz them up with some colorful sprinkles, toasted almond flakes or a dust of icing sugar for a festive treat. Get the recipe.
Four Ingredient Milky Arab Cookies
This recipe uses butter, flour, icing sugar and powdered milk to create these sweet treats. Get the recipe.
No-Bake Peanut Butter Cookies
What’s so great about this recipe is you don’t need an oven! Heat ingredients on the stove top, drop onto cookie sheets and wait for them to harden.
This recipe allows for a number of variations – so you can work according to what’s in the store-cupboard. Coconut sugar is suggested for a healthy option, so when stockpiling you may want to consider adding it to the list. Get the recipe.
COOKIES ACCORDING TO MAIN FLAVORING INGREDIENT
Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal Cookies
Crisp on the outside and soft inside, these delicious cookies are synonymous with fall once the apple crop is in.
The recipe calls for Granny Smith apples, but you could substitute whatever variety you have growing. Get the recipe.
Blueberry Cookies
What’s great about this recipe is that it uses fresh rather than dried blueberries – so once you’ve done a bit of foraging in your food forest you can head inside and bake these treats.
The lemon extract called for in the recipe can be replace with fresh lemon zest if you have a lemon tree. Get the recipe.
Buttermilk Biscuits
Alone these are tasty little nibbles but for a serious treat add the frosting.
This recipe calls for chopped walnuts to be sprinkled on the frosting, but you can substitute with any other nuts you have in store or even tiny chunks of fresh cherry, sprinkles, or whatever appropriate topping treat you have in your store cupboard or available fresh from the garden. Get the recipe.
Cashew Nut Cookies
What’s great about these is they use powdered milk.
The recipe does specify icing sugar instead of granulated sugar, but don’t worry you can make powdered sugar in your blender, food processor, or coffee grinder. Just whizz for 15 seconds at a time, checking the consistency and when its fine enough you have icing sugar.
The result may not be as smooth as commercially bought icing sugar, but as you are not using it for icing a cake but in the cookie dough it will be fine. Get the recipe.
Cherry Cookies
What I love about this recipe is that it uses fresh cherries from your trees, and almonds mixed with basic cookie dough. So if you weren’t quite sure what to do with all those cherries and almonds…
Just remember their tip to drain and dry the cherry pieces once you have diced them otherwise you will have pink cookies – but is that such a bad thing? Get the recipe.
Chewy Coconut Cookies
Basic store cupboard ingredients are given a lift with the addition of flaked coconut for
these chewy sweet treat. Get the recipe.
Cinnamon Cookies
Baking cinnamon cookies just makes your home smell so good! And the results are equally tasty.
The basics should all be in your SHTF supplies; just add butter and egg and vanilla essence, and it’s instant down-home goodness. Get the recipe.
Cornflake Cookies
Stored too many cornflakes and need to use them or simply tired of cornflake breakfast? Combine with powdered milk and a few other ingredients to create these yummy not-too-sweet-but-tasty cornflake cookies.
The recipe calls for self-raising flour, but if you don’t have any it’s easy to create your own by adding a pinch of salt (1/4 teaspoon) and 1 ½ teaspoons of baking powder to 1 cup of flour.
Make sure you sift the three together, so the baking powder and salt are evenly distributed. Get the recipe.
West Coast Trail Cookies (with Cranberry)
For those with nut allergies these are perfect as they use cranberries, and pumpkin seeds for the crunch as well as oats and flax seed meal – no nuts at all. Get the recipe.
Cranberry and Sage Cookies
Dried cranberries from the pantry and fresh sage from the garden make for these tasty treats. The recipe calls for cornstarch which should be a SHTF staple in your stockpile as adding some to your flour when baking makes for a softer product.
It’s well known for its uses for thickening soups, stews, and gravies. Get the recipe.
Cranberry Walnut Cookies
These cranberry walnut cookies use what you can get from the homestead. Hope you planted cranberry bushes and walnut trees!
This recipe uses orange juice, but you can swoop out for milk instead if you don’t have oranges on hand. Get the recipe.
Date and Pecan Nut Cookies
Raid the pecan nut trees, use some stashed dried dates, and you’re set for delicious treats. Get the recipe.
Lemon Lavender Cookies
What sets these apart is the lemon zest and the lavender flowers. The recipe calls for culinary lavender, but don’t assume you have to buy it.
If you have English Lavender (Lavandula angustifolia) in your garden that is organically grown, you can harvest the fresh flowers to use in the cookies – you only need one and half teaspoons for this recipe. Get the recipe.
Lemon Chia Seed Cookies
All the goodness of chia seed – you definitely should have this superfood in your stockpile – and some fresh lemon zest and lemon juice, make for a vegan cookie that takes 25 minutes from prep to coming out of the oven. Get the recipe.
Lingonberry Sandwich Cookies
These golden cookies with the red jam filling make these a festive treat. If you have lingonberry or red currant jam stored then this is a perfect way to use it.
A little dust of icing sugar on the top will make them even more festive. The recipe does call for ground almonds and almond extract. Get the recipe.
Peanut Butter Cookies with choc chips
Crisp outside and chewy inside – yum, these cookies lift the basic peanut butter cookie taste with the addition of choc chips. Get the recipe.
Lemon Cookies
Soft and chewy these are a great way to use the lemons from your tree combined with pantry staples. Get the recipe.
Molasses Cookies
Have some molasses stored? Use it in these old fashioned cookies that combine the festive tastes of cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and ginger for a crispy chewy treat. A tip for dried spices is to keep them in the freezer so they last longer.
This recipe link has all sorts of variations like molasses cookies with caramel, molasses cookies with pistachios and molasses cookies with lots of ginger. Yum!
Mulberry Cookies
This recipe call for dried white mulberries but you can use dried red or black mulberries too.
You can either sun dry your mulberry drop or use a dehydrator to preserve your harvest for all year round use. Get the recipe.
Peach Cookies
When the peach harvest comes in it’s a busy time canning and preserving in various ways. Take some time out to treat the family with these cookies using fresh peaches and cinnamon. Yummy!
These are not the ones that are painted with food coloring to look like real peaches – those are a bit fiddly, but these are super easy and tasty. Get the recipe.
Pumpkin Cookies
Fall, Halloween, and loads of pumpkin to use! Make these sweet soft cookie treats to share once those golden pumpkins are ready for harvest.
They are described as somewhere between a cookie and the top part of a muffin – perfect for people who like a pillowy cookie oozing with flavor. Get the recipe.
Pumpkin Gingersnap Cookies
The recipe calls for molasses as well as pumpkin and ginger, so just make sure you have the molasses and ginger on hand to make these fall specials.
Raisin Oatmeal Cookies
Crisp on the outside, tender inside, cinnamon flavored, loaded with raisins and good healthy oats, these cookies are easy to whip up from the stockpile.
Raspberry Lemon Cookies
The recipe calls for frozen raspberries, simply because they are easiest to work resulting in swirls of red in the pale golden cookie dough, however you can use fresh raspberries you’ve picked – but the result will be a more uniform pink without the contrast.
You can always freeze your fresh raspberries before mixing them into the dough. The recipe also uses fresh lemon zest – hope you have a lemon in a pot on the balcony or planted in the garden!
GLUTEN FREE RECIPES
Dried Apricot and Walnut Oat Cookies
Whether you have dried out some of your apricot crop and canned the rest, or simply stashed some dried apricots you bought at the supermarket ( the soft dried apricots from Turkey are delicious) in your supplies this is a good way to use them.
Don’t be put off when the recipe calls for oat flour – you simply put rolled oats in your food processor and in a minute you have oat flour – the recipe explains the process. Get the recipe.
Oatmeal Cookies With Raisins and Gluten Free Flour
For those people with allergies or a wheat intolerance here is the answer – a sweet treat without the drama. Get the recipe.
Mulberry Cookies (No Bake and Gluten Free)
I wasn’t sure whether these should go under the ‘simple ingredients label’, but opted to put them here because they are vegan and gluten free – all you need is dried white mulberries, medjool dates and shredded coconut, mix together and you have healthy sweet treats. Get the recipe.
