Healthy Peanut Butter Banana Oat Cookies - 3 ingredients (sans optional extras)

So after Tuesday's healthy banana pancakes - which turned out to be amazingly delicious, I have been very intrigued by the idea of baking with bananas (besides banana bread)! That along with my recent lus (for lack of a better word!) for crunchy oat cookies got the gears in my brain turning.

So I thought ... surely if I could bake a pancake with banana and eggs, I could make an oat cookie using a similar method. So I turned to trusty old pinterest to see if it has been done, I went through tons of recipes, a lot of them called for apple sauce, some called for vanilla essence, flaxseed, almond milk, the varieties are endless.

So based on what I read I decided to give it a go, with peanut butter of course, that's why they are 3 ingredient cookies, but if you don't dig the PB then skip it and turn them into 2 ingredient cookies!!

Ingredients:
2 ripe bananas
1 cup of raw instant oats (give or take, depending on the size of your bananas)
2 teaspoons of peanut butter

Method:
Preheat the oven to 180°C.
Using a fork mash up the bananas in a bowl, try to get it quite smooth.
Add the oats and mix thoroughly until well combined. If you are using large bananas you'll need more than one cup of oats, otherwise your cookies won't be very crunchy but rather dense and chewy.

Mix in the peanut butter.
Once everything is well combined, add in your optional extras (apple and cinnamon, fudge pieces, dried cranberries, nuts and raisins or choc chips).
I went for the dark choc chips!

Roll the dough into balls of your preferred size and place them on a greased baking sheet. (I lined our oven pan with tin foil and sprayed it with cooking spray.)
Flatten the dough balls out, they don't spread or rise so you don't have to accommodate for a cookie spread when you place them on the tray.

Pop them in the oven for 15-20 minutes, the tops will go golden brown and the edges of the cookie will start browning.
Once they are ready, take them out the oven and let them cool.

The recipe yields between 12-16 cookies and the hardest part is not eating them all on the same day they were made...we did! OOPS!

At least we don't have to feel guilty about it, it was really just a banana, a teaspoon of peanut butter and half a cup of oats each with a sprinkling of choc chips!

They are surprisingly filling and would be great for breakfast on the go, or a pre/post workout snack.

Let me know what you think, or if you have any interesting variations I can try!!