Anecdotally one of the ways to increase breastmilk supply is to eat 'lactation cookies'. Their ingredients of brewers yeast, flax seed (aka linseed) and oats are apparently lactogenic and increase the production of breastmilk. I'm not sure if their effect is just placebo but if they taste ok then there's no harm in trying!
The original recipe that I tried didn't taste great; it was quite a scone-like texture and I could taste the yeast. I decided to tweak the recipe to make it tastier whilst maintaining the 'active' ingredients.
Here's my version of the recipe;
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp flaxseed/linseed
- 110g softened unsalted butter
- 150g soft light brown sugar
- 1 egg
- 1tsp ground ginger
- 1.5 tbsp brewers yeast powder.
- 0.5 tsp salt
- 140g plain flour
- 65g oats
- 80g Crystallised stem ginger finely chopped
Method
• Preheat oven to 180c
• Blitz linseed to a powder in the blender. If your blender's not powerful enough to do this you can buy milled flaxseed but it's much more expensive. I tried a pestle and mortar and a cheaper food processor and neither were powerful enough.
• Combine linseed powder with 2 tbsp water in a mug and leave for 5 mins. It should turn into to a jelly like goop.
• If your brewers yeast is in a tablet form then grind to a powder in a pestle and mortar.
• Meanwhile cream butter and sugars together in a food processor.
• Add to that the egg and linseed goop and mix.
• Add brewers yeast, flour, salt and ground ginger and mix well.
• Add oats and stem ginger and mix till evenly distributed.
• Line two baking trays with baking parchment
• Take heaped desert spoonfuls of mixture and place on baking sheet, flattening as much as you can. Space the cookies we'll as they spread. You should get about 12 large cookies.
• Bake for 10-12 mins till golden then allow to cool on the baking tray till firm.
