Applesauce Banana Oatmeal Cookies

These last couple of weeks I've been trying to see how little I can go to the grocery store by using my food storage to make meals for my family. So far I've only had to buy milk, eggs, and bread. I do have powdered milk, powdered eggs and flour. However, those items are quite expensive to replace in powder form. I want to make sure I keep those for a true emergency. Therefore, I am willing to purchase only those items from the store. I have been using frozen and canned vegetables instead of fresh, just for this experiment since I currently don't have a garden. I have several banana's that were getting quite browned in places and I needed to use a few of them up. Instead of the typical banana bread I wanted to make something that was a "treat" for my kids. They won't eat banana bread. I found a recipe on yummly.com for banana oatmeal cookies. I had most of the items and I decided it sounded delicious to make. However, I got a phone call part of the way through making the cookies... never a good idea. However, I made a mistake in making the cookies, and they still turned out delicious. Here is my altered recipe from the one I found on Yummly.com. I am posting the doubled recipe since I doubled the original recipe. this recipe makes 4 doz cookies.

Total time 20 min
Bake 10 min
Prep 10 min

Applesauce Banana Oatmeal Cookies

Ingredients:

1 cup butter shortening
1/2 cup applesauce (homemade)
1 cup white sugar
1 cup coconut sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 cup white unbleached flour
1 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp cloves
1/4 tsp nutmeg
4 ripe (browning) bananas
4 cups oatmeal (old fashioned)
4 Tbsp flax seed

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Cream sugar, shortening and applesauce until fluffy. Add eggs 1 at a time incorporating each egg before adding the next. Add dry ingredients alternating between flours and other dry ingredients. Add oatmeal, bananas, and flax seed. Drop by teaspoonful on greased baking sheets. Bake 10 min each.

These cookies are delicious! My kids LOVE them! I was worried that the baking powder would change the flavor and consistency of the cookies but it didn't bother them at all. They are fluffy almost cake like cookies. Nice and soft! I hope you enjoy them as much as we do.

Banana Oatmeal Wheat Muffins

I was craving banana muffins today and I had several bananas that were perfect for banana muffins. So I looked on Pinterest here and found a recipe for Banana Oatmeal muffins. I had all the ingredients except for chocolate chips. I know a travesty but none the less, no chocolate chips. :( I thought I could make it a little healthier if I wanted so I made a few changes to the original recipe. Here is what I did. I have the muffins in the oven right now. I tripled the recipe and made 18 muffins and 2 loafs of banana oatmeal wheat bread.

Banana Oatmeal Wheat Muffins

• 9 mashed bananas (the more ripe the better!)
• 1 cup vanilla Almond milk (you could use skim but you may want to add a little sweetener)
• 6 eggs
• 3 tbsp Baking powder
• 8 cups (240g) Old Fashion or Rolled Oats
• 1 cup wheat flour
• 1 1/2 cup coconut sugar
• 3 tsp vanilla extract
• 9 tbsp (42g) mini chocolate chips (optional)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees

Mix all ingredients except the chocolate chips together, and let sit while you prepare the muffin pans.

Spray a muffin pan and/or liners with with non-stick spray.

Stir the chocolate chips into the oatmeal batter.

Divide batter into 15 muffin cups. They should be just about filled.

Bake 20-30 minutes, you’ll see the edges just starting to brown and they will be firm to the touch.

The muffins may stick when hot but are removed easily when cooled for a bit.

*For bread bake for 60 minutes.

They look and smell delicious. I hope you give them a try :)