Healthy cookie saga #1: The worst cookies I've ever had

Healthy Banana and Oat Cookies

Banana + oats.

There have been a load of 2-ingredient recipes floating around on the Internet, a summary of which can be found on BuzzFeed. In this case, I was lured into making the banana and oat cookies because I wanted to have a guilt-free snack to bring along with me beyond the confines of my home.

Without sugar and flour, people often wonder how the ingredients are bound together. Obviously it's not the oats... Bananas are probably preferred to other fruit because they are really starchy in consistency. So in that sense, the recipe works. However, it isn't very appetising.

The cookies were okay immediately out of the oven (albeit a little bland, so I drizzled honey over them), but give them more than a day, and the banana overpowers everything and turns the cookies into tough, chewy (not in a good way!) lumps.

I varied the recipe slightly by throwing in some nuts and another banana (they were small and extra starch was needed to bind the higher amount of dry ingredients). Other people add dried fruit, coconut... the list goes on.

Ingredients

Pecans

• 2-3 ripe bananas (depending on size)
• 1 cup of rolled oats
• 1 cup of roughly chopped pecans (best to toast them, though I forgot to do so)
• Splash of vanilla essence

 Method

• Mash bananas and add oats
• Add roughly chop pecans and mix everything together
• Scoop onto tray lined with greased baking paper (my mixture made 11 cookies)

Unbaked mixture

 

• Preheat oven to 160°C (mine is fan-forced)
• Bake for 15 to 20 minutes (depending on how crisp you like your cookies)
• Cool for a few minutes before transferring to a rack

Finished product

 
Conclusion: Yucky. Never attempting a 2-ingredient baking recipe again.