Super Healthy, Super Delicious Banana Oatmeal Cookies
Did I say “super” enough? These cookies are my favorite healthy treat to eat, and everyone I know who’s tried them likes them. (Plus, what’s not to like about a healthy cookie that stirs up in less than 5 minutes?) I never would have thought that such a simple concoction would be so delicious, but these cookies remind me so much of banana bread (but healthy!) and not-crunchy granola that of course they’re wonderful. And yet as long as you don’t eat them all at once, they’re easy to fit into a weight loss plan that gets you healthy as you lose excess pounds.
If you prefer a chunkier cookie, add in chopped walnuts, which is how I’ve always made them (and how they’re pictured above). Just yesterday, though, I tried an experiment. Rather than add in chopped walnuts, I used my little food processor to grind them pretty finely so that my son could have some cookies (minus the raisins in his portion — they’re a choking hazard for little ones who don’t chew very well yet), and the result was a much more traditional cookie-like texture than the way they’re pictured above.
Here’s what you need to make these delicious little cookies:
- 3 small or 2 large very ripe bananas (the riper, the better!)
- 1 cup rolled oats (not steel-cut!)
- 2/3 cup raisins
- 3/4 tsp. vanilla flavoring
- 1 tsp. ground cinnamon
- 1/2 cup or 1 cup walnuts, chopped coarsely or ground finely in food processor
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
In large mixing bowl, mash bananas well. Add in 1 cup rolled oats.
Put raisins in glass container (I simply use a glass measuring cup) and add water to just cover raisins. Microwave on high just until water boils. Set aside briefly.
To bowl containing bananas/oats, add vanilla, cinnamon and walnuts.
Drain raisins, saving 2 tbsp. of the water. Add raisins and water to banana/oat bowl. Stir well. (Mixture will be chunky.) Drop cookie dough by heaping tablespoon onto an ungreased baking sheet. Bake for 14-18 minutes (or until very lightly browned). If you grind walnuts, it will likely take 3-4 minutes longer in oven for cookies to set.
Remove cookies from oven and allow to cool for 5 minutes before taking up with a spatula.
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Healthy eating notes:
Make sure your bananas are very ripe. Unripe bananas will be hard to mash up, and they also won’t add enough natural sugar to the recipe. I personally buy bananas once a week and let them ripen just for this recipe!
You can find no-alcohol-added vanilla flavoring from Frontier brand at many better health food stores. If you use regular vanilla instead, opt for the best brand you can find. When you make smoothies and sorbets containing simple ingredients, you want to make sure every little ingredient is as good as it can be.
This recipe contains dried fruit (raisins), which may be a trigger food for sugar-sensitive people. If you are one of them, I highly recommend you avoid this recipe to avoid triggering the cravings cycle! I personally find that these cookies aren’t a problem for me at all, likely because of the high fiber content, though I can’t ever eat dried fruit on its own.
These cookies have a completely different texture the day they’re baked versus the next day. I particularly like the chunky walnut version the day they’re made, though loved ones assure me that even though they’re not the same the second day, they’re still equally good. But given that this recipe takes about 5 minutes total to stir together, I do recommend making them the same day you plan to serve them.
Copyright 2009-2010 Jennifer McCay
www.LeanGreenMama.com
These sound and look good, but I know for sure they would be something I’d want to binge on. One or two wouldn’t be enough!
They’re great, but like I mentioned in the recipe itself, I am a firm believer in staying away from your trigger foods, whatever they might be. (My own triggers happen to be things that [mostly] make me violently ill these days now that I’ve eaten so well for so long, which keeps me away from them more easily.)
We made these recently and added a jam thumbprint (using 100% all fruit, of course) and almonds. Oh-la-la! Thanks for sharing your version :-)
Glad you enjoyed them! :) I am going to have to try them with almonds sometime soon, though I think I’ll do a mix of almonds and walnuts because there’s just something special about bananas and walnuts.
Oh, and if you want them to be truly decadent, add a little shredded unsweetened coconut! Almost forgot to share that because I haven’t made them that way in ages (my husband, it turns out, is allergic to coconut, even when it’s just airborne in the house)!
[...] also making a big batch of the Super Healthy, Super Delicious Banana Oatmeal Cookies for the road, and I’ll likely pack up some homemade hummus and cut veggies to tide us over as [...]
These sound great! I love making cookies with ground walnuts and bananas! I’ll probably add some cocoa powder to mine, because, well, I’m just a succer for chocolate! haha :)
I’d highly recommend trying them without cocoa first and then maybe adding a tiny bit of cocoa to one or two cookies’ worth of dough. But then I don’t like chocolate and banana all that much, and these cookies taste a lot like healthy banana bread. Hmmm … if the cocoa works out, let me know. I’m just … skeptical. :)
Can you make these without the walnuts? We have a tree nut allergy in the family. Or, maybe I’ll just make these for me!!
I think you could make them without walnuts (and you could also try another type of nut as well, like pecans — anything that would taste good with banana-bread type flavors). They won’t be quite as delicious in my opinion, but I made them without walnuts a few times for my son without much trouble (before I discovered that grinding up the nuts made the cookies quite lovely), and my son just gobbled them up. :)
Can you tell me how many calories per cookie and if possible the proteint count?
These sound amazing and I will be trying this recipe
These cookies are awesome, and I hope you enjoy them! The only caveat is that sometimes the first time you make them, you may get the cooking time slightly wrong for your personal taste, but the second batch (and third and so on!) is always better. Every oven is different, unfortunately, so this is a wee bit unpredictable.
I don’t have the time to do a calorie count myself (at some point when I have an assistant I may be able to offer this), but on any of my recipes, because I always, always, ALWAYS :) use whole foods, you can easily find the individual ingredients’ calorie counts online with a quick search, add them up and divide by number of servings (12 cookies in this case). Also, I’m not sure why the protein count is important for you (I know sometimes diabetics are asked to do protein and carb counts), but the healthy way of eating I recommend typically doesn’t require that sort of counting for dieting purposes (which is why I love it!).