Fancy some peanut butter and banana cookies? How about if they are vegan, gluten-free and sugar-free? These cute bite-sized cookies are a breeze to make and are very forgiving to your waist.
To turn them into a healthy treat, we replaced the hyper-caloric ingredients found in most cookie recipes: butter, eggs, and sugars.
Instead, we used the following alternatives, which have a better nutritional profile and are fully vegan:
Peanut butter to replace butter
Ripe bananas instead of eggs
Dried cranberries instead of sugar
We also swapped wheat flour with gluten-free oats. We often use oats in our vegan bakes. Once they soak in water, they become excellent binders and help keep everything together, without the help of butter or eggs. Pair them with something sticky like chia-eggs or bananas, and your ingredients will hold together like peas in a pod.
If you can, always try to swap out normal butter in your diet. It's the low hanging fruit of achieving a healthy diet. Many alternatives are just as tasty, but much more nutritious. Nut spreads are among them, and peanut butter is a great starting point. Check out these butter-free cookie recipes for more ideas!
How does everything come together? Pretty well! Check out the nutritional profile of these cookies: a serving of 3 cookies has 210 calories, 17% of protein RDI, 20% of fibre RDI and only 4.3% of sugar RDI. They are just 25 minutes away if you start now, so let's get baking!
NOTE: The default ingredients yield 30 mini cookies and one serving consists of 3 cookies.
Are these cookies good for diabetics?
Our recipe above didn't use any added sugars at all. The ingredients with the most sugars include dried cranberries and bananas. For a serving of three small cookies, cranberries will have a glycemic load of 3 and bananas a glycemic load of 2.
On top of it, these cookies burst with fibres, so even the few sugars in there won't cause any abnormal spike in your blood sugar levels. So unless you plan on eating 100 hundred of these in a single day, you're good to go.
Do I have to bake them? Can I make energy balls?
The recipe above requires baking, but you can shape the cookies into balls if you prefer and turn them into energy bites! If you were looking for a no-bake cookie recipe, then check out these no-bake energy balls.
How can I make these peanut cookies keto?
To make peanut butter cookies that are keto, you'll have to swap out bananas and oats with a lower carbs alternative. As a flour substitute, you could use almond flour. As a sugar replacement, you could use erythritol instead, or stevia. Check out these keto cookie recipes for help:
Ingredients
| Ripe Bananas | 2 |
| Jumbo Rolled Oats | 160 g |
| Peanut Butter | 170 g |
| Dried Cranberries | 70 g |
| Pumpkin Seeds | 60 g |
Step 1
Blitz the bananas in a food processor or mash them in a bowl with a fork or potato masher.
Make sure you're using ripe bananas as they will taste sweeter and will be easier to smash into a pureè.
Step 2
Next, transfer the banana mash into a bowl and add the oats, peanut butter, dried cranberries, and pumpkin seeds.
Work the ingredients until they come together into a moist and sticky dough.
You can now leave the mixture to harden for 10 minutes in the fridge to make it easier to handle.
Step 3
As the cookie dough is quite gluey and heavy, use a spoon or small measuring cup to portion it over a baking tray lined with parchment paper.
At this point, you can leave the biscuits as they are and gently flatten them down, pressing with your fingertips.
Alternatively, you can garnish them with one banana chip (either fresh or dried) pushed down in the centre of each cookie.
Step 4
Finally, bake the peanut cookies in the preheated oven for 18 minutes at 160°C (320°F) for static ovens or 140°C (285°F) for fan ovens.
Then, transfer the biscuits over a wire rack to cool down evenly and crisp up.
Tips
When buying peanut butter, check the label and go for the brand without any palm oil, sugar, or salt. Or why not make your own? It's so simple! You can follow our brazil nut butter recipe, and use peanuts instead — it's the same procedure.
Add 1/2 a teaspoon of ground cinnamon to the cookie dough for extra flavour.