Thursday, May 16, 2013

The Healthiest Cookies in the World

You know that Pinterest thing? How it sucks you in and you end up pinning directions for how to make your own soap and ten thousand recipes for cookies that you'll probably never have time to make?

I stumbled across the recipe for two-ingredient cookies several months ago, and I finally found time to make some this weekend.  I kid you not - Lauren over at The Burlap Bag has a recipe for oatmeal cookies that has two ingredients as the base of the cookie. Bananas and oats. And then you add whatever mix-ins you like and chow down with very little guilt. Especially if you go the raisin route for your mix-in.


When these cookies were all said and done, they had a very chewy consistency, and a taste similar to banana bread. I also added cinnamon for flavoring, because I'm not a big enough fan of bananas by themselves.


It's very to start. Just mash up a couple large, ripe bananas. I used three because mine were on the small side.  I was very happy I had my OXO stainless steel bowls handy, because the mashing process could have caused a lot of sliding around if not for the non-skid bottom on the bowl. It also was a great excuse to use my new Pampered Chef Mix-n-Chop. (How did I live without this thing for so long?)



Next you add a cup of oats.  Lauren calls for quick-cook oats in the original recipe, but I didn't have any on hand, just rolled oats. You can actually make your own quick-cook oats by pulsing rolled oats in a food processor for a minute or so. Basically the difference is that quick-cook oats are chopped up into slightly finer pieces than the rolled oats they're made from.

Anyhoo, a cup wasn't quite enough to make a nice dough, so I added about a half cup more to get a consistency I liked.



Now if you're cool with just straight banana flavor, you can stop here. But I'm not that good of friends with bananas. And I wanted to keep these healthy. So I mixed in about a cup of raisins and a whole lot of cinnamon.



I guesstimate about two teaspoons of cinnamon.  In these sorts of recipes, I don't really measure my spices.

When it's all mixed up, it'll be sort of thick and paste-like. Just  scoop it onto  parchment lined or well-greased cookie sheets. My small cookie scoop was about perfect. And Lauren is right - if you don't have your cookie sheet lined or greased, the cookies will stick. I even had a hard time getting them off the parchment.

These didn't spread out too much, so I sort of flattened the second tray to make them more of a cookie than a clump.




Bake on 350 degrees for about 12 to 15 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool. Then eat as many as you want, because everything it them is good for you!


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