Oatmeal Banana Cookies

 

I had a funny problem last week. As usual, I bought a large bunch of bananas when I went to do my weekly grocery shopping. The very next day, my sister sent a large bunch of bananas to my house with her girls; leaving me with about 20 bananas.

I gave them to the girls as much as possible, integrating them in different things but I just couldn’t use them fast enough. I truly dislike wasting food so it was time to get creative. Of course I knew I could make some banana bread but I was looking for something different. A friend suggested I make banana cookies. I did and we loved them! I decided to share this recipe with you because the ingredients are all things I had in my home already. Those recipes are the best! So here it is:

Oatmeal Banana Cookies

• 1-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 3 cups oats
• 1/2 cup shortening
• 1/3 cup applesauce
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2-3 mashed bananas
• chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350F degrees. Combine first 5 dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, cream both sugars, shortening and applesauce. Add to that the egg, vanilla and mashed bananas. Combine the wet and dry ingredients; mix well (batter will be pretty wet). Drop spoonfuls on a cookie sheet and bake for 12-14 minutes. 

You could add chocolate chips to the batter but I didn’t have enough to do that. I only had about 1/3 of a bag of them. So I melted them and drizzled the chocolate over the top. Perfect. Or you could leave the chocolate out altogether and sell them as “Breakfast Cookies!”

Why I do what I do ~ Seriously, I had to hide these because the little girls couldn’t get enough of them!

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Tagged as: Frugal Food, Recipes, Resourcefulness