I absolutely LOVE oats. They’re an essential cupboard ingredient for me – I love baking with them and of course, using them in my breakfasts, especially Overnight Oats! This week, I decided to get a little creative and come up with a new cookie recipe using oats as the key ingredient – I’m delighted to share the success with you guys! Let’s bake!

Recipe (Makes 10 Cookies)

Ingredients

• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 2 tbsp dessicated coconut
• 2 tbsp oil (you could use olive oil or rapeseed oil or coconut oil! I had a fresh jar of tahini so I used the oil from the top of that)
• 2 tbsp peanut butter
• 2 tbsp maple syrup or honey
• 50ml milk of choice
• 2 ripe bananas
• 200g of quick cook oats
• 1 handful of dried fruit (I used raisins and cranberries)
• 1 handful of seeds (I used pumpkin seeds, but I also love flax and chia seeds)
• 1 handful of raw mixed nuts, roughly chopped
• Optional: Dark chocolate chips would also be delicious in these cookies!

Method

1. Preheat the oven of 175C (fan oven), and line a flat baking tray with greaseproof paper or tinfoil greased with a little oil.
2. In a large mixing bowl, combine the dry ingredients – oats, dried fruit, mixed nuts, seeds, dessicated coconut, cinnamon and baking powder.
3. Mash the bananas in a separate small bowl until almost liquid like, then tip the mashed banana into your big bowl of dry ingredients.
4. Add the rest of the wet ingredients – oil, milk, maple syrup/honey and nut butter.
5. Get a large spoon and mix everything up, ensuring all of the wet and dry ingredients are combined.
6. Time to get creative with shapes! If you have a cookie cutter in your house, definitely use that to shape your cookies by adding spoonfuls of batter into the cutter on your tray. If you don’t have one, just scoop a spoonful of batter out onto the tray and spread it a little so it’s a rounded shape. Then repeat for the rest of the cookies! I made 12 using my batter, but you could make them smaller and make more if you like.
7. Bake the cookies for 20-25 minutes, turning the direction of the tray halfway through. Check them at 20 minutes – if a fork stuck into the centre of the cookies comes out clean you’re good to remove them from the oven!
8. Allow to cool for 15-20 minutes before tucking in!
9. You can freeze these cookies too if you make a big batch – otherwise store them in a tupperware for 4-5 days.

Enjoy guys! Tag me if you try this recipe out – @theirishbalance on Instagram/Twitter/Facebook!

Ciara 🙂 x