Ep 1. Banana Nut Cookies 

For those of you who don’t know, I am a horrible cook and baker. If it involves food, I’ll probably mess it up. As evident by my plethora of baking horror stories. Because of my “average” skill level, I decided that it would be an amazing idea for me to start a cooking series! The premise of this series would be to show you if a recipe is actually manageable for an average person. Many of the recipes out there that claim to be “easy” are often extremely complicated and rely on perfection to complete. I will try and act as a filter for these recipes, taking you along on my journey of recreating them.  

This edition will be focused on “healthy baking” a new trend that’s happening where wealthy suburban soccer moms are revamping unhealthy recipes with honey and coconut oil. I for one am all about it! Anything that will allow me to eat more baked goods is fine by me.  

I am starting easy with three–ingredient “banana nut cookies”. This recipe is from Skinny Taste. This website seems to be full of recipes like this one.  

Ingredients 

• 2 medium ripe bananas, mashed 
• 1 cup of uncooked quick oats 
• ¼ cup of crushed walnuts 
• Sprinkle of cinnamon (for flavor) 

This recipe calls for two bananas, however, I only have one, so I will be halving the recipe. Along with that change, I also don’t have “rolled oats” I only have old fashioned. However, I don’t think the type of oats I use will drastically affect the outcome. I will also be adding honey because this recipe does not sound like it would be very tasty. I’m hoping the honey will add that extra oomph.  

Instructions 

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.  Spray a non-stick cookie sheet with cooking spray 

1. Combine the mashed bananas and oats in a bowl. 

1. Fold in the walnuts and place a tablespoon of each on the cookie sheet. 

1. Bake 15 minutes. Makes 16 cookies. 

I used a fork to mash the bananas then mixed in the honey and oats. Since the honey is a liquid, I went a little heavy on the oats and walnuts. My recipe only made six cookies, and I got to say they’re looking a little worse for wear.  

I found that they need to be left in the oven for 17-20 to harden them enough. This may be because my cookies are larger than they are supposed to be. 

Now that the cookies have baked, I can officially say the best part about this recipe was the easy cleanup. The cookies themselves smelled amazing but were barely palatable. While warm I was able to swallow one, but after they cooled I couldn’t. I can say that this attempt at “healthy baking” was not a success.