Summary

Prep: 10 mins
Cooking: 12 mins
Ages: Toddlers to Teens
Difficulty: Easy peasy
Makes: 15 cookies

Banana oatmeal cookies as part of a gluten free diet

If you are making these cookies as part of a gluten free diet, it’s always best to check that the oats you are buying are marked as ‘gluten free’. Oats are naturally gluten free, but many oat products are prepared in factories where they also produce wheat and wheat flour. For this reason they can sometimes get contaminated. So it’s worth checking that they are labelled ‘gluten free oats’ when purchasing if you are avoiding gluten entirely.

Oats are a great way to make hearty cookies that are slow energy releasing. We use a combination of whole oat flakes and oat flour so that you get the crunchiness of the oat flakes, but the biscuit texture from the oat flour.

How ripe should the bananas be

If you buy bananas from the supermarket the chances are that they will be pretty firm. If you mash them when they’re still fresh, you will probably end up with a lumpy banana mash and they won’t be as sweet.

For these banana oatmeal cookies we want the bananas to be ripe so that they are nice and soft. So I would wait for at least 4-5 days after buying them before using them.

Ideally you want them to be soft enough to mash without using a lot of force (or soft enough for little kiddos to mash up). You don’t want them to be brown and bruised and they do ripen quickly so keep an eye on them.

And a final tip, don’t store the bananas in the fridge. Leave them out to ripen.

Ingredients

• 175 grams of gluten free rolled oats
• 75 grams of gluten free oat flour  (3/4 cup)
• 1 teaspoon of baking powder
• 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
• 50 grams of butter, softened
• 1 ripe banana, mashed
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 120 ml maple syrup (½ cup)
• 40 grams large raisins (¼ cup)
• pinch of salt

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.
2. Grease a baking sheet with cooking spray.
3. In a medium sized bowl, whisk together the oats, oat flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt.
4. In a separate bowl mix together the butter, mashed banana, vanilla and maple syrup.
5. Pour the dry ingredients into the wet and mix well.
6. Fold in the raisins.
7. Using a spoon, drop the cookies onto the greased baking sheet.
8. Bake for 10-12 minutes, or until golden brown around the edges.
9. Let them cool on the baking sheet for 10 minutes before removing to a baking rack.

Why kids go bananas for bananas

Bananas have been a long time favourite of little ones. You may have fed your toddler or baby banana puree as one of their first foods, and it probably went down without complaint! Naturally sweet and creamy, they are popular with children around the world, and the good news is they actually also have many great health benefits too.

Bananas are best known for their high levels of potassium, an essential vitamin which helps with cell function, heart function and blood sugar levels. Adults are told to consume 3,500mg of potassium per day and the average banana contains 450mg of potassium which is a lot to get for just one lonesome piece of fruit.

In addition to potassium bananas also have: calcium manganese, magnesium, iron, (which can help with anaemia), folate, niacin, riboflavin, and B6.

They are also high in fiber, which helps slow down digestion. This means that we and little ones feel fuller for longer and which is why these banana oatmeal cookies really do help fuel us all up, without the nasty sugar highs and lows.

We haven’t added any other refined sugars to the recipe, so you can let the kids enjoy these cookies guilt free. And of course they are great fun to make together!

Banana oatmeal cookies – our step by step guide:

Making the banana oatmeal cookie mixture is so easy we’ve put the 4 easy steps together here below.

When making cookies, it’s usually best to first mix the dry ingredients, like the oats and oat flour, in one bowl. Then in a separate bowl you can mix the wet ingredients together like the maple syrup and softened butter. At the end you combine the two and stir the raisins into a nice smooth biscuit batter.

1. Whisk your oats, oat flour, cinnamon, baking powder and salt together in a bowl.
2.  Grab another bowl and mix together your mashed banana, butter, maple syrup and vanilla.
3.  Pour your dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and mix everything together.
4. Fold in your raisins.

We placed a round cookie cutter on a baking sheet and filled it with the cookie batter. We then patted it down to create the perfect circle.

You can just as easily drop a tablespoon of batter onto the baking sheet and pat it down if you prefer. Or you can make them into different shapes using shaped cookie cutters.

Another idea is to roll the batter into a ball with your hands and create little banana oatmeal energy ball cookies that kids will also love.

Bake in the oven for 10-12 minutes or until the cookies are golden brown around the edges.

Leave them to cool on the cookie sheet for about 10 minutes before moving them to your cooling rack.

Enjoy your banana oatmeal cookies with a glass of milk

Kids will probably be grabbing these off the cooling rack at the first opportunity, so make sure you get your hands on one too before they disappear!