Peanut butter oatmeal banana cookies recipe

Here is an easy, flourless, healthy and vegan recipe for peanut butter oatmeal banana cookies. It’s here because I am quite sure that you have these 3 ingredients: peanut butter, oatmeal, and banana. Don’t you? If yes, then let’s bake!

Feel free to add other ingredients that you have on hand.

For example, I like adding some chopped walnuts for extra protein and healthy fats.

You can also experiment with adding some other ingredients, such as other nuts (almonds, peanuts, sunflower or pumpkin seeds, pecans), extra sweetener (maple, agave syrup), shredded coconut, cacao, or/and dried fruits.

And yes, the peanut butter oatmeal banana cookies are refined sugar-free (please note that the cookies are not very sweet, so you may want to add some syrup into it), flour-free, dairy-free, gluten-free (make sure your oats are certified as gluten-free), oil-free, egg-free.

In one word, they are healthy.

If you’re craving a cookie, I would advise you from the bottom of my heart to try these peanut butter oatmeal banana cookies.

Not only because they are easy to make, but also because these peanut butter oatmeal cookies are healthy, vegan, cheap, and packed with proteins and healthy fats.

Shortly, I will point out why you should try this peanut butter oatmeal cookie recipe:

• Soft inside but crunchy outside
• Simple to make: done in approximately 20 minutes
• Accessible ingredients: you probably have on hand already, so you can make the cookies right away
• Plant-based and gluten-free (if your oats are certified as gluten-free)
• Healthy
• Full of nutrients: protein, healthy fats
• 3 ingredients
• Flexible: add your I-don’t-know-any-recipes-with-them and I-don’t-like-the-raw-taste-of-them nuts, seeds, dried fruits

Ingredients that you will need for the recipe of peanut butter oatmeal banana cookies:

Guess what? You will need only these 3 ingredients for the cookies

• Banana: you can find this ingredient even at your neighbor, even if he is not vegan, yeah. Try to use very ripe bananas, they are sweeter. If your banana is not very ripe, you can still use it, though I would suggest adding some extra sweetener, such as maple or agave syrup. 2-3 tbsp of any liquid sweetener should be enough.
• Old-fashioned rolled oats or simple instant oats: well, all the recipes that I saw with peanut butter oatmeal cookies are made with uncrushed, whole oats. Yes, they are delicious, but the cookies don’t look so appealing, and, let’s face it, everyone is tired of simple oats. That is why I blend the oats to transform them into flour. That way, the taste of the cookies changes – they become more delicious: crunchy outside and soft inside. YOU CAN use unblended oats, but if you have a blender, sacrifice another minute of your life by making flour out of them.
  Another thing to pay attention to is the gluten-free certificate of oats. If you are eating gluten-free, be careful when choosing oats. For more information about gluten-free oats, check out this article. Yes, oats are gluten-free normally, but during the process of production, they add extra ingredients for preservative reasons, which normally include gluten. So, keep that in mind.
• Peanut butter: for this recipe, I use creamy peanut butter. However, crunchy PB would work fine as well. If you use crunchy peanut butter, a nice idea would be to add 2-3 extra tsp of it.

Extra ingredients possibilities for peanut butter oatmeal banana cookies

First of all, you should know that for 9 cookies, you don’t have to use more than 0.5 cups of those extra ingredients. Otherwise, the cookie dough will not stick together, so you won’t be able to make the cookie shape. For example, you can add 0.25 cup of an extra ingredient and 0.25 cup of another. Or 3 extra ingredients that don’t exceed 0,5 cups in total.

Ok. And now, I will give you some examples of ingredients that you can add to your peanut butter oatmeal banana cookies.

• Dried fruits: figs, raisins, dates, prunes, apricots and so on. They will give an extra sweetener to your cookies (the cookies are not very sweet by themselves). Besides that, dried fruits have antioxidants and fiber, which are very beneficial for your health.
• Nuts: almonds, cashews, pecans, walnuts (my favorite extra ingredient so far), pine nuts, pecans, hazelnuts, Brazilian nuts, macadamias. All of them will add extra protein and healthy fats to your cookies. Also, I love the crunchiness of them, especially when baked in those cookies.
• Seeds: chia, flax, sunflower seeds, pumpkin and so on. Your body will tell you “thank you” after that. They absorb bad things in your body and push them out of it. SO many scientific experiments prove that they are good for digestion, especially when talking about chia and flax seeds. You probably won’t feel them in your cookies, but those extra benefits make the difference.

How to make the cookies?

• First, blend the oats to transform them into flour. This is an optional step, but it makes a lot of difference. You can also buy directly oat flour if you don’t have a blender.
• Next, mash into a deep bowl 1 ripe banana. Then, add the peanut butter and oats.
• As an extra step, consider adding some other ingredients, such as dried fruit, nuts or seeds (but no more than 0.5 cups in total). For instance, I added 0.3 cups of chopped walnuts.
• Mix everything until well combined.
• After the cookie dough is done, take around 2-3 tbsp of the dough and shape it into a cookie form. In total, you should make around 9 cookies. Then, with a fork, press onto the cookies to spread them a bit more (they won’t spread when baking). This also helps if you want them crunchier on the outside (watch the video for a more comprehensive understanding).
• Bake the cookies for 15 minutes at 175 C/350 F. Let them cool on a grid baking tray for about 20 minutes or so.

How to store these 3 ingredients peanut butter oatmeal banana cookies?

• At room temperature for up to 2 days. Put a kitchen towel on top to prevent them from hardening.
• In the fridge for up to 5 days. Store in an air-tight container.
• Freeze for up to 3 months. When you are ready to serve, warm them up in a microwave or in the oven for around 5 minutes.

TIPS ON MAKING THE COOKIES

1. You can buy directly oat flour if you don’t have a food processor or you don’t want to invest time in this.
2. The cookies are not very sweet. Add some extra liquid sweetener if you like. For example, maple syrup.
3. These 3 ingredients are the base for the cookies, but you can add extra ingredients to your peanut butter oatmeal banana cookies if you like (maximum 0.5 cups of extra ingredients). For example, you can add walnuts (as I did), hazelnuts, almonds, raisins or other fried fruits, coconut flakes, and so on. 

Peanut butter oatmeal banana cookie recipe

Per serving:

Protein: 5% of your daily dose

Net Carbs: 10% of your daily dose

Fat: 8% of your daily dose

Fiber: 8% of your daily dose

Iron: 3% of your daily dose

Calcium: 1% of your daily dose

Vitamin A: 0,2% of your daily dose

Vitamin C: 2% of your daily dose

Folate: 4% of your daily dose

Potassium: 5% of your daily dose

*please note that these numbers are estimated 

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