Four ingredients, one bowl, twenty minutes. A mashed banana does the work that butter and sugar normally do, and a scoop of collagen protein goes in with the oats.
They are soft rather than crisp, and they are genuinely as simple as the name suggests.
Key points
- Four ingredients. Banana, oats, protein, choc chips.
- No added sugar. Beyond the chocolate chips.
- Twenty minutes. Start to cooling rack.
- Soft, not crisp. Banana cookies always are.
- Use a ripe banana. The one thing that matters most.
Ingredients
- 1 large banana, mashed
- 1 cup oats
- 1 scoop Noway Protein, unflavoured
- 1/3 cup choc chips
Method
- Preheat the oven to 180C and line a baking tray with baking paper.
- In a large mixing bowl combine the banana, oats and protein powder. Add the chocolate chips and stir well.
- Spoon tablespoon-sized balls of mixture onto the tray. Push each down with a fork to form a cookie.
- Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, or until golden.
- Cool on the tray for five minutes before transferring to a wire rack. Store in an airtight container once cool.
How ripe should the banana be?
Very. This is the difference between a good batch and a bland one.
The banana is the only sweetener in the recipe apart from the chocolate chips, and bananas get sweeter as they ripen because their starch converts to sugar. A yellow banana makes a bland, slightly starchy cookie. A heavily spotted, almost-black one makes a sweet one that mashes to a smooth paste with a fork.
If your bananas are not there yet, leave them on the bench a few days, or freeze and thaw one, which softens it quickly.
Why are my cookies soft in the middle?
They are meant to be. There is no butter, no egg and no flour here, so these will never crisp the way a traditional cookie does.
If you want them firmer:
- Flatten them more. Thinner cookies dry out further. This is the most effective change.
- Bake five minutes longer at the same temperature, watching that the bases do not catch.
- Leave them on the tray longer. They firm up considerably as they cool, so judge them at room temperature rather than hot.
Can I make them without protein powder?
Yes. They become banana oat cookies, which are perfectly good, just lower in protein.
Replace the scoop with a couple of extra tablespoons of oats so the mixture is not too wet. Expect a slightly softer result, because collagen protein absorbs some of the banana's moisture.
Which protein powder works here?
Collagen protein suits this recipe particularly well, because it does not tighten and dry the way whey does when baked. Unflavoured keeps the banana in front.
Whey works but bake it two or three minutes less. Plant protein absorbs noticeably more moisture, so add a splash of milk if the mixture looks dry.
Worth knowing: collagen is not a complete protein. It is low in tryptophan and short on several essential amino acids, so it is not a substitute for whey or a plant protein if muscle is your goal. In a cookie that hardly matters. As your main protein source it would.
What else can I add?
The base takes additions well as long as the wet-to-dry balance holds.
- Cinnamon. A teaspoon. The best single addition here.
- Peanut butter. Two tablespoons for a richer, chewier cookie.
- Chopped walnuts or pecans. Texture against the softness.
- Desiccated coconut. Swap out a quarter cup of the oats.
- A pinch of salt. Not really an addition, more an omission in the original. It lifts everything.
How long do they keep?
- Airtight container. Three days at room temperature. They soften over time because of the banana.
- Fridge. Up to five days, though they firm up considerably.
- Freezer. Up to three months.
They are best on day one and day two. After that the banana starts to dominate the flavour.
For more like this, browse the full recipe collection, or the collagen protein range.
