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!!

Life lately - 20 February 2015

Hi everyone! I was very surprised to see my last life lately post was almost a month ago...Damn! I'm sorry! I know a few of you want to keep up with how things are going here and what we are up to, so here goes...

Last time we caught up I told you that we'd be moving in to our new apartment...we moved in, and we've been busy sorting out paper work and updating all the service providers with our details and all those fun things you have to worry about when you're an adult...I often wonder why I was in such a rush to grow up when I was little, then a few minutes later I remember - independence and freedom. I have no one moaning at me for going through a bottle of peanut butter a week (except Riaan HAHA!), but I have good reason, I'm still in search of a good replacement for Yum Yum...So far the Waitrose brand is in the lead, but I'm on my 3rd bottle from Waitrose and every bottle has tasted different - it' so weird!! Any London-based self-confessed peanut butter lovers willing to help a sista out??

Talking about peanut-butter...in case you missed it, here's a snap of the awesome peanut butter hot drink I found here! It's super tasty!!

So for the first week we got by with the bare minimum, not because we couldn't afford to buy everything we need but because we couldn't carry everything we needed to buy on our first trip three trips to the shops. It's so weird not having a car!! We ended up going to the shops three times to get the bedding right...THREE TIMES? IN ONE WEEKEND...That's not normal!! On the Saturday we bought a duvet inner, pillows, flat sheet and fitted sheet, but no duvet cover set because we couldn't find one we liked. We got home to discover the bed actually isn't a double, it's bigger, so we had to go exchange everything for the correct size - back to the shops! Then we got home to discover we got a valence sheet instead of a fitted sheet - so on Sunday we had to go exchange that. What a mission!! In and amongst all these trips we bought some groceries and a few basic kitchen utensils. The stuff urban survival is made of!

The following weekend we did some shopping in Stratford at the Westfield and on Sunday we missioned to Wembley to go to Ikea and Curry's PC World. The TV and TV stand we got at Curry's was so big and heavy that we didn't bother going to Ikea because we wouldn't be able to carry anything else, we had decided to get the TV and stand home by train because the delivery fee was a rip off. Well that was fun!

The following weekend we went to Ikea again, we spent almost the entire day there, it's just so big and fascinating. They literally have something for everything. I found stuff I never knew I needed, what sorcery is this?? We ended up buying some shelving solutions for our shelveless cupboards and some basic house stuff. The kind of stuff you don't realise how much you need/use it until you don't have it. Hangers, coat hook, shower caddy, clothes airer etc.

I love Ikea, we are going again tomorrow to order this awesome shelving unit for our lounge, and to get some decorative goodies for the apartment.

Image source

Last weekend we celebrated Valentines day and spent the day sightseeing and wondering around London. I will share our day in  photos with you soon! Here's a sneak peek for now!

We happened to see two vossies (foxes), one was next to the river on the south bank in between the restaurants. The other one was in the woods across the road from our apartment, that one told us the long awaited answer to the question "What does the fox say?"...The fox doesn't say anything, it screams, like a young girl being attacked. It's quite disturbing actually.

So that's it, a month summed up, nothing too exciting or eventful. Oh it snowed!! That was awesome, a tiny bit of snow, but hey who's counting, snow is snow!! Hope you enjoyed the post!!

The Londoners Guilt Free Dairy Free "Ice Cream"

Although it's a little late, as promised yesterday..here it is!
A healthy, guilt-free, dairy-free "Ice Cream" that will not de-rail your diet but is oh-so delicious!

I first found this recipe over on The Londoner's blog (her pics are waaaay better than mine...but I'm working on it, so for now - please excuse me), Rose has tons of awesome recipes, I still have a few I want to try! I followed her instructions, it's easy peasy and only takes a few minutes - but I hate chopping hard things in the blender, it gives me the heebie jeebies!!
So the next time I made this "Ice Cream" I used the same concept but did it a little differently.

What you'll need:

4-5 Bananas - not too ripe
Flavouring of your choice

How you'll do it:
Peel your bananas and cut them into chunks. (Rose tells you to freeze your bananas after this step)

Toss them into your blender/food processor/smoothie maker or any other pulverising device.

Pulse the blender until your bananas are a nice smooth consistent mush.

Add your flavouring and blend well - I made chocolate and split it into 2 portions (one plain chocolate and the other with a teaspoon of peanut butter!) You can really use any flavouring you like. I plan on adding some fresh strawberries to my next batch! Oooh and maybe I'll make a coffee batch as well...just thought of that and it sounds good, I can imagine it would taste like a freezo, YUM!!

Decant the contents of your blender into a freezer bowl, and pop it into the freezer. Leave it in the freezer depending on how you like your ice cream, I freeze mine for a couple of hours because I like my ice cream to be firm. If you like it a little mushy and melted then an hour should be just fine.

I like eating mine straight out of the freezer bowl but you could always scoop and serve if you feel like sharing! You can top it with fresh berries, chopped nuts or anything else that tickles your fancy!

What I like about this recipe is the fact that its good for pretty much everyone, lactose intolerant, vegan, vegetarian, you name it! Also, the banana flavour doesn't really come through unless your bananas are over-ripe. I also think it's really  important to use a good quality flavouring because, well that's what ice cream is all about!

I like making a big batch of this ice cream (chocolate of course) and freezing it, that way whenever my sweet tooth is calling, I have a healthy but satisfying snack at my fingertips!