Banana Oatmeal Cookies - Plus Mix-Ins of Your Choice!

Another Pinterest find! Original recipe can be found at The Burlap Bag, but it's pretty much the same as what I have here.

Ingredients
2 large, ripe bananas
1 cup quick oats

Examples of add-ins (or nothing at all!)
- chocolate chips
- walnuts
- cinnamon
- raisins
- dried cranberries

Directions
Pre-heat oven to 350. Mash bananas until they're mostly smooth. Mix in oatmeal and whatever fix-ins you'd like. 
Grease a cookies sheet or use a silicone baking mat (you have to do one of these, or else the cookies will stick like crazy!). Drop sough on to cookie sheets and flatten with fork. 
Bake 15-18 min. Let sit for a minute or 2, and then transfer to a cooling rack.

I used 3 bananas, 1 1/2 cups oatmeal, 1/2 cup chocolate chips and some cinnamon. They were really good! I had 18 cookies, and 2 cookies were worth 1 Weight Watchers PlusPoints.
I think next time I'm going to add a tablespoon or 2 of peanut butter... mmmmmm

Healthier Banana Bread

While I LOVE my Mom's banana bread, it's not exactly healthy. And since I'm trying to drop some poundage, I need to find a healthier, but still tasty, version of one of my favorite foods!

Mom came across this one and it's pretty yummy! One eighth of the recipe is 6 PointsPlus for Weight Watchers.

Very dense and moist, this bread is fragrant and scrumptious. For an even lighter treat, you can cut the sugar in half or use some Splenda sugar substitute.

Weight Watchers Healthy Banana Bread recipe

Ingredients

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 cup all-purpose white flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon allspice

1 teaspoon cinnamon

2/3 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

1/3 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (optional)

2 eggs

3/4 cup granulated sugar

4-5 very ripe bananas, mashed

3/4 cup sugar free spiced unsweetened applesauce

2 eggs

Preparation

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

2. Spray a bundt pan with cooking spray, set aside.

3. In a medium bowl, mix the dry ingredients, whisking to combine. Add the chocolate chips and nuts if using.

4. Beat the eggs with the sugar together at medium-high speed until creamy.

5. Beat in the applesauce and bananas.

6. Fold in the dry ingredients.

7. Pour into the prepared pan and place it in the oven. Once the oven door is closed, reduce the heat so it’s between 325-350 degrees F.

8. Bake for about 35-40 minutes (the cake is done as soon as a tester comes out clean).

9. Cool on a wire rack for about 5 minutes.

10. Invert on the rack, remove the pan, cool and store in an airtight container.

Nutritional information for 1/16 of the recipe (not including chips or nuts):

Calories: 121

Calories from fat: 8

Total fat: 0.9g

Cholesterol: 26mg

Total carbs: 26.6g

Dietary fiber: 1.9g

Protein: 2.9g

Peanutty Chocolate-Banana Bread

INGREDIENTS

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup sugar

1 tbsp baking powder

1/2 tsp

1 cup mashed ripe bananas (about 2 medium bananas)

1/3 cup milk

1/3 cup peanut butter

3 tbsp vegetable oil

1 egg

3/4 chocolate morsels

1/3 cup peanuts, coarsely chopped (optional)

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Spray bottom of loaf pan with nonstick cooking spray. In large mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Add bananas, milk, peanut butter, oil and egg; mix just until dry ingredients are moistened. Stir in chocolate morsels. Spoon batter into pan; sprinkle with peanuts.
2. Bake 60-70 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Remove from oven; cool in pan 10 minutes. Remove bread from pan to cooling rack; cool completely.

Banana Bread

My munchkins enjoying some banana bread :-)

My mom has been making this recipe for as long as I can remember, so I don't know where it originally came from. But it's amazing and I'll never bake another (plain) banana bread as long as I live!


INGREDIENTS

Dry

1 3/4 cups flour

2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoons baking soda

pinch of salt

1 cup sugar

Wet

2 eggs

1 cup mashed bananas

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1 cup chopped nuts (optional)

-OR-

1 cup chocolate chips (optional)

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350. Grease and flour loaf pan.
2. Sift and mix dry ingredients together. Add wet ingredients and mix until well incorporated. Spread mix in the loaf pan and bake for 1 hour or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Yields 1 loaf.

VARIATION: spoon in to grease/floured or paper-lined muffin cups and bake for 18-20 min or until a toothpick comes out clean.

You can also substitute half of the flour for equal parts whole wheat flour.