If you've ever felt like having a cookie but the stores were closed or far away and you didn't really feel much like baking and maybe you didn't even think you had the right ingredients in your baking drawer.. (or perhaps you don't even have a baking drawer?) then this recipe just might be for you. All you need is an oven, oats and a ripe banana. That's it!
You can of course add some more ingredients and bring your cookies to another level, for example by adding just a couple more things and making these: also super simple oatmeal cookies.
But today I would like to share with you how you can make cookies within minutes out of just oats and bananas.
You are welcome to follow this recipe for similar cookies, but with a tad longer ingredient list, however, here I've also given you a few optional ingredients that you might already have at home that could surely boost the taste and texture of your cookies, but you can totally just stick to the 2 ingredients and they will also be very tasty.
2-Ingredient Cookie Recipe
yields: about 10 cookies
prep time: about a minute + about 20 min in the oven
clean up: minimal- one bowl;)
Ingredients
1 ripe banana*- about 120g (when peeled)
1,5 cups of rolled oats (I use gluten-free old-fashioned/rolled oats)
optional: pinch of salt
optional: raisins and/or dairy-free chocolate chips - about 1/4 cup
optional: 100% nut butter or coconut oil - 1 Tbsp
optional: cinnamon - 1/2 tsp
optional: this cookie recipe that bases largely on this oat-banana foundation and is almost as simple as this one, and tastes similar, but better:)
Method:
First, preheat your oven to 185C/365F.
If you're making your cookies with just the 2 ingredients, simply peel the banana and mash it with a fork or a potato masher, then add the oats and proceed to step 4.
If you're adding any of the optional ingredients, I'd separate the dry ingredients from the wet first and only once you mix them within those categories I'd combine them together in one bowl, so follow these instructions:
1- Add the oats as well as all the other dry ingredients you're using (salt, raisins, chocolate chips, cinnamon) into a mixing bowl and mix everything well.
2- Peel the banana and place it in a separate bowl. Mash it with a fork or potato masher. Now add in the nut butter or coconut oil if using and mix well.
3- Place both the dry and the wet mixtures in one bowl.
4- Combine everything using a fork, a spoon or your hands. If you use your hand you might end up crushing some of the oats in the process and creating a more uniform cookie dough, if you use a fork your oats should retain their shape and therefore remain visible in each cookie. Neither one is a better way, it just depends on your personal preference. The more uniform the dough the softer your cookies will be, but the dough with un-crushed oats sticking out has a bigger crunch potential.
5- prepare a baking tray and a sheet of parchment paper.
6- Once your dough is ready, roll about 1-2 Tbsp of it at a time into balls, or you can use an ice-cream scoop and scoop out the dough balls. Place the balls on your baking tray covered with the baking paper. Space them evenly.
7- Take a fork, spoon or your hand against a piece of parchment paper and press each of the balls down to flatten the cookie to about 1 cm or 1/3 of an inch thick cookies.
8- Bake in preheated oven for about 20-23 minutes. Check after 20 minutes, the cookies should be ready. They will seem a bit too soft, that's okay. You should take them out just as they start to brown on the edges a little bit, but you don't want to let them burn.
9- Let the cookies cool down on your baking tray or a cooling rack for at least 10-15 minutes.
Store in a cookie box or an airtight container for about 5 days, you can also freeze them in an airtight container for up to 2 months.
* NOTE: Remember the riper the banana the sweeter the cookies. In this case we're not using any other sweeteners than the banana, so it really needs to be ripe for the cookies to taste good. Of course, you can increase the sweetness level with raisins and/or chocolate chips or other sweeteners, but if your banana is ripe enough there should be no need for that.
Try also:
