peanut butter & banana chocolate chip cookies

I love baking.  I love having sweet treats around (well I don't, because then I eat them, and that isn't good for maintaining weight loss, but whatever).  I love giving Ryann a little treat because it makes her so happy.  BUT, I also don't want to give her loads of sugar all the time, not to mention I don't need it myself.

I'm pretty sure Melissa pinned something similar to this a while back, or made it, or something.  Or maybe that is all in my head.  But pinterest was being stupid on me again so I can't find out for sure.  I saw them again last week and decided it was a great way to use up our browning bananas.

For a sugar free, egg free and potentially gluten free recipe (if you want it to be gluten free make sure you use gluten free oats) these cookies are amazing.  And pretty dang good for an oatmeal cookie in general  We gobbled up our batch pretty quickly.  I also felt that a couple of them were a satisfying snack for me after a workout.

The original recipe suggests using chocolate chunks, which I think would be delicious, but we didn't have any.  It also called for creamy peanut butter, but I used chunky.  I like the crunchy nuts in there.  Lastly I didn't add any of the optional coconut either, because we didn't have any, but I'd be interested to try it.  Oh, ok also I ended up with a mix of milk chocolate and dark chocolate chips because my chocolate chip stash was almost gone, but I think it would be fine with semisweet, best with all dark chocolate.

Peanut Butter & Banana Chocolate Chip Cookies
slightly adapted from Babble's 'The Family Kitchen'

Ingredients

• 3 large, very ripe bananas
• 1/2 cup chunky all-natural peanut butter (or regular peanut butter, whatever you've got)
• 1/4 cup canola oil
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 cups old-fashioned (large flake) or quick oats
• 1/3 cup shredded coconut (optional)
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup dark chocolate chips

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a large bowl mash the bananas with the peanut butter, oil and vanilla.  In another bowl stir together the oats, coconut, baking powder, cinnamon and salt.  Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients along with the chocolate and stir until combined.
3. Droop spoonfuls of dough onto a parchment or Silpat lined baking sheet, or one that is sprayed with nonstick spray, and bake for 12-14 minutes, until just set.  Makes about 2 1/2 dozen cookies.

For the record, I only got 20 cookies.  Maybe I made mine really big?  I have no idea.  They definitely weren't huge.

Enjoy!