If
the heading attracts and/or surprises you, then you’re about to be even more surprised
because this could actually be a two ingredients cookie, anything else is just
extra filling. The two ingredients? – Banana and quick cooking oats i.e.
regular old Quaker oats. The third filling ingredient? – Any nut you may be
nuts about, nuts are a beautiful thing; so many to choose from. Also, my recipe
has a few more ingredients than these three but again, all just filling. Just
banana and oats is just fine, it may have a bit less flavour but still good
stuff. Also, if you don’t like banana or oatmeal; well, I don’t eat either of
them and absolutely loved this healthy snack. So give it a try, you never know
and it takes hardly any time or money.
3-4 medium-sized overripe bananas
1
cup (16 tablespoons, 80 grams) quick oats
1
teaspoon (~2.5g) cinnamon
1
teaspoon (~2g) ginger powder/1 tablespoon very finely grated ginger (about an inch of ginger)
I
egg or flaxseed substitute
1/4
cup (4 tablespoons/25-35g depending on nut) crushed nuts, about a handful.
Teaspoon
of oil to grease cookie sheet (you can also use cooking oil spray)
Ingredient Notes
All
ripe bananas are fine but overripe is best for three reasons. Works better in
the recipe because it’s sweeter, easier to mash and you’re using bananas you
probably would have thrown away. Win, win, win! FYI to prevent sobbing as you
watch that ₦600
bunch of bananas go rotten before your eyes you can also cut up bananas,
overripe or not, and store in the freezer till you have time to melt and use it.
It won’t be so great for eating but works just fine for baking.
The
regular Quaker oats type works best in case you use the old-fashioned oats
which are larger in size. However, you can still use that type if you don’t
have quick cooking oats.
 |
| Flaxseed 'Egg' |
I
use flaxseed ‘eggs’, make this by adding a tablespoon of flaxseed powder to
three tablespoons of water, mix and put in fridge for about 15 minutes, it'll develop the texture of an egg. You can also
use no egg or ‘egg’ at all especially if you’re not adding in too many extras.
The egg is just for binding the ingredients together when it’s too much for
just the oil in the banana to handle.
I
felt the amount of nuts was too small for the blades of my blender to get to
so I just put the nuts in a cup and crushed away with a turning stick/'garri turner' for what felt like
forever but hopefully you have more efficient equipment or at least a small
mortar and pestle. Need to get that. Any nuts you like should work fine.
For
those worried about the lack of sugar, you could add a 1/4 cup raisins or chopped dates,
a teaspoon vanilla extract, 1/4 cup chocolate
chips, 4 squares of melted baking chocolate, or even two tablespoons of sugar if you
have to go with that though I’d really love if you’d just try it out without
sweeteners at least once. Believe me, it’ll be sweet, not too sweet but quite
enough to satisfy a sweet tooth like me for a while.
Preparation
Preheat oven to 180 degrees C (350 degrees F or 4 on a 1-10 scale oven)
Mash bananas to a paste then add
in oats, cinnamon, ginger, nuts and egg. Mix well.
Mix in nuts and/or your choice of
sweeteners. You can use a ¼ cup of nuts and still use your sweetener but try to
use just one of each because it may make it harder for your cookie to stick
together. If you really want to add all the yummy stuff in your kitchen
cabinet/fridge then use an extra egg(s) (or flaxseed substitute above) and
perhaps a tablespoon of oil like coconut oil, canola, butter. Just as long as
your mixture is still thick enough to stick on your spoon for a few seconds
before dropping if you hold it up sideways like in the picture.
Drop a tablespoon of
banana-oatmeal mixture on a greased cookie sheet and then flatten with the back
of a spoon. (You don’t need to flatten if you like soft cookies). You can try
and pat the sides with the spoon as well to get a nice circle shape. 10-12
cookies will fit on one cookie sheet.
Bake 35 minutes, flip cookies and
bake another 10 minutes. This is for those who want the cookie as hard as
possible, if you like it soft then it should be ready in 20 minutes. I like
things really crunchy and close to burnt so I left mine in 30 minutes, flipped,
then baked for another 15 minutes, then increased the oven to 200 C (400 F or
no. 6) for about 6 minutes, 3 minutes on each side. But keep checking it doesn’t
get burnt for those last 6 minutes.
As the cookies cool, they’ll get
harder, although if you added too much ‘orichirichi’, it may never get hard.
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