#cleancookies

Tisha x Ginger !

Lately, I can't get enough of these cookies! I've been making them every week! 

If you travel a lot, like me, you can freeze them and take them with you. Perfect snack on the go! 

 Banana Oatmeal Cookies: 

 2 very ripe bananas 

1 cup Gluten free oatmeal

 2 TBSP PB2 

Optional:

Enjoy Life mini chips 

 Walnuts

 Dried fruit

Here’s what I did:

 Smash bananas with a fork. Mix all ingredients together. Drop on to a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake at 350 for 15 min or until golden. Enjoy! 

This is how a make an unhealthy cookie recipe a little more guilt-free! 1st: find a recipe that you’d like to alter! 2nd: look at your list of ingredients. I see it calls for butter, white sugar, brown sugar, 1 egg, all-purpose flour, vanilla extract, salt, baking soda, cinnamon and quick oats.

3rd: if you’re unsure whether your alternate ingredient is actually healthier than the original, look it up! Www.fatsecret.com has every food imaginable. In this case I thought for sure margarine would be better than butter, but I wanted to make sure because I had both, so I looked it up. Turns out margarine had less calories and saturated fat (and fat in general) BUT there is far less cholesterol and sodium in regular butter. Sometimes the calories of an ingredient don’t tell the whole story! Needless to say I stuck with butter on this one!

4th: Sugar. We all know we need a little sugar in our diets but we do not need as much as this recipe calls for. As Splenda and sweet n’ low would work just fine, I like using stevia because the taste is a lot closer to the taste of sugar and it’s all natural! Plus, you can use half the amount of stevia to replace sugar and get the same sweetness!

5th: how many times have people told you to STAY AWAY from white grains? So who needs white flour? You will get a ton more fiber in your diet if you switch to whole grains and use whole wheat flour!

6th: speaking of whole grains, you can get your oats that way too! Old fashioned whole grain oats are much healthier and loaded with fiber and good complex carbs that will keep you going throughout the day!

7th: and to switch things up a little I added some mini dark chocolate morsels. Chocolate isn’t as bad (in moderation) as people make it out to be. Dark chocolate has been found to have great benefits for your heart and body! Don’t be afraid, toss some in there!

8th: some people get worried about a whole egg having too much fat or cholesterol, but you’re only using one for this recipe, so use it! What people assume is that all fat is bad fat and this is not true! The fat in an egg is actually healthy fat and won’t do any damage. But for those of you who want less “fat” in this recipe 2 egg whites should also do the trick ;)

9th: other than all of those ingredients I didn’t see an issue with the other ingredients, because I didn’t want my cookies to taste like cardboard! So I mixed up all the ingredients, cooled the dough in the fridge for 1 hour and placed on a greased cookie sheet and baked for 10 minutes in the oven at 375!