Healthy Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies with Banana and Chocolate Chips

I have been on a "baking with bananas" kick lately. I have been baking anything I can with bananas; breads, muffins or cookies. I think I quite possibly found the healthiest cookie I have ever made this morning on Pinterest. It has a cake-like texture, not a crispy texture, and it is sweet but not too sweet. It is also very addicting. I must admit, I have already eaten four of them. The recipe does not use eggs, butter or sugar, rather, it uses peanut butter and maple syrup. It is very easy and quick to put together. My daughter (she's 4) and I made these in about a half hour this morning when she got home from school.

Ingredients

2-3 ripe mashed bananas

1 Tbsp Vanilla extract

3/4 Cup peanut butter (I used creamy although the original recipe called for chunky)

4 Tbsp maple syrup

2 Cups rolled oats

1/2 Cup whole wheat flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 Cup chocolate chips

Directions

Preheat your oven to 350°. Line your cookie sheets with aluminum foil and lightly spray them with Pam cooking spray.

In a large bowl, mash your bananas. Add the Vanilla extract, peanut butter and maple syrup to the mashed bananas. Beat together until it forms a nice, creamy consistency. I blended this by hand which allowed my bananas to stay a bit more chunky than they would have been if I had used my mixer.

In a separate bowl, blend the flour, oats, baking powder and salt. Add the dry mixture into the wet mixture a little at a time. My daughter could only mix about half of it in and then I finished mixing it in for her. Then add your chocolate chips. We used milk chocolate chips but semi-sweet chips would be very good, too. Your batter will be lumpy.

Place spoonfuls of batter on your cookies sheets and bake the cookies for 12 minutes; my oven cooks hot so I only baked mine for 10 minutes. Let the cookies cool on the cookie sheet for a few minutes before taking a bite. Remember, chocolate chips are very hot right out of the oven. Enjoy your snack of healthy cookies, I hope you like these!