"Clean Simple Eats" Sweets

Healthy cookies? Who knew there was such a thing? This afternoon I was checking up on the happenings on Instagram when I saw @cleansimpleeats posted a recipe for "Skinny Banana Cookies" and I immediately went to store, grabbed some bananas, and turned on the oven. The result was awesome. :-) 

Last night, Darren and I went to a birthday party and overdosed on delicious appetizers and desserts at a restaurant called Moxies. While these eats were scrumptious, we both woke up today and decided we needed to repent and be a little healthier (I feel like we do that a lot though, it's a vicious cycle). 

The problem with trying to be healthier is that I have a VERY overactive sweet tooth. So when I saw "skinny" and "cookie" in the same recipe name it caught my attention. Enough of my gabbing, here's the recipe:

"Skinny Banana Cookies" from @cleansimpleeats
Ingredients:
- 4 medium ripe bananas, mashed
- 2 1/2 cups oats
- 1/4 cup all natural peanut butter or other nut butter (I used regular PB because that's all we had)
- 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
- dash of cinnamon
- 1/2 cup dark chocolate chips (I used milk chocolate because if I used dark then I'd be the only one eating them)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. Combine all ingredients together and spoon onto parchment paper on a baking sheet
3. Bake 12 minutes and cool on cooling rack
Makes 32 cookies.



Pretty straight forward, yeah? Mash up some bananas, throw in some oats, peanut butter, chocolate chips, seasoning and voila! Healthy cookies!

Did you know that in Canada, Kraft makes peanut butter and puts pictures of teddy bears on it? I didn't.

Now this is where I got nervous: I'd made the dough, I'd formed the cookies and placed them on the cookie sheet. The thing is that I have very rarely, like VERY rarely, had a cookie that I formed nicely and stuck in the oven and had it come out looking as nice as it did when it went in. I seriously thought that these would turn out the same way and they would fall sometime during the 12 minutes of baking time. 

The picture @cleansimpleeats posted looked like baked versions of the cookies I'd formed from dough: (Photo taken from her Instagram post)

 I wasn't sure how mine would turn out. Twelve minutes later:

Victory!!! I was seriously so surprised!!! Adding to the fact that I love @cleansimpleeats because she posts healthy food and sticks the recipe in the comments instead of making you track down the website, but now I can confidently say that non-foodies and people who are less than proficient in the kitchen can follow her recipes and have them turn out as good as she says they will!!

Taste test: they were delicious. And I typically steer clear of things with banana in them but maybe it was the oats or the peanut butter or the chocolate (all things I love) but I didn't feel like the banana took over the cookie. If I were to rename these, I would call them "Skinny Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies Held Together by Bananas." Her name for them is shorter though and probably more accurate... I tried. 

I texted my husband to tell him I'd baked him some treats. His response was, "Are you trying to make me fat?" And I could tell him with confidence that they wouldn't! (He got home from work and ate some before I even knew he was home. Pretty sure that means he liked them)

Instagram WIN!!!