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Banana Oat Breakfast Cookies with Walnuts and Raisins

Soft, chewy breakfast cookies made from ripe bananas, oats, peanut butter, walnuts and raisins, with no added sugar, flour or eggs. One bowl, 35 minutes, and they keep for days for grab-and-go mornings.

Breakfast

35

Makes 12 cookies (serves 6, 2 cookies each)

Round banana oat breakfast cookies studded with walnuts and raisins on a plate

Ingredients

  • 3 large, very ripe bananas with brown spots (about 300g/10½oz peeled)
  • 170g/6oz/2 cups rolled oats (labelled gluten-free if needed)
  • 2½ tbsp (40g) smooth peanut butter, no added sugar or salt
  • 2 tbsp (14g) ground flaxseed (linseed)
  • 1 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 50g/1¾oz/½ cup walnuts, roughly chopped
  • 40g/1½oz/¼ cup raisins
  • A pinch of salt

Method

  1. Heat the oven to 180C (160C fan, 350F) and line a large baking tray with baking paper (parchment paper).
  2. In a large bowl, mash the bananas with a fork until almost smooth, then stir in the peanut butter until evenly mixed.
  3. Add the oats, ground flaxseed, cinnamon and salt and stir well. Fold in the walnuts and raisins. Leave the mixture to stand for 5 minutes so the oats and flaxseed absorb some of the banana and it firms up. It should hold together when pressed; if it feels crumbly, stir in 1 to 2 tbsp of milk or water.
  4. Scoop 12 equal mounds (about 2 heaped tablespoons each) onto the tray, spaced slightly apart. Flatten each with the back of a wet spoon into a round about 7cm/2¾in across and 1cm/½in thick. They do not spread in the oven, so the shape you make is the shape you get.
  5. Bake for 15 to 18 minutes, until golden at the edges and firm on top.
  6. Leave on the tray for 10 minutes; they are fragile while hot and firm up as they cool. Then move to a wire rack.
  7. Store in an airtight container for up to 3 days, or in the fridge for up to 5 days. They freeze for up to 3 months; defrost at room temperature.

Why it works

Two cookies have about 8g of protein, 6g of fibre and 282 calories, with no added sugar, no flour and no eggs. The sweetness comes from very ripe bananas and a few raisins; the riper the bananas, the sweeter the cookies.

Why oats for breakfast. Oats contain beta-glucan, a soluble fibre that helps you feel full. In the UK and the EU, food authorities accept that oat beta-glucan helps lower blood cholesterol when you eat 3g of it a day, and the US FDA allows a similar heart-health claim. Two of these cookies provide roughly 1.3g.

What holds them together. Mashed banana, peanut butter and ground flaxseed do the job usually done by egg and flour. That is why the mixture rests for 5 minutes, and why the cookies need 10 minutes on the tray before you move them.

Make it a fuller breakfast. Two cookies are lower in protein than a cooked breakfast. Eat them with a pot of Greek yogurt or a glass of milk or soy milk for a more balanced start. With about 33g of carbohydrate they are not tagged for blood sugar. Walnuts add plant omega-3 fat.

Contains peanuts and tree nuts; for a nut-free version, use sunflower seed butter and pumpkin seeds. Not gluten-free as written; use oats labelled gluten-free if you need to. For another bake, try the baked oats with apple and cinnamon or the healthy banana bread.