Banana Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Last Monday we got a special little present in the mail - a new beater for our Kitchen Aid mixer (the mixer is 14 years old and the coating was peeling off the beater it came with - the kids were quite concerned as cookies are pretty important around here . . .). The kids insisted we celebrate the new beater by making cookies. And since they can pretty much make cookies on their own and I'm always up for a good cookie, I was happy to go along with the idea.

We have three favorite cookie recipes - all with some healthful qualities, all totally delicious. Mostly we make a lot of pumpkin cookies this time of year but the chocolate chip oatmeal cookies still happen quite a bit too. We hadn't made our other favorite cookies for a while and had some overripe bananas on hand so we went with these banana oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and re-realized how good they are.

Banana Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

These are great to make when you've got overripe bananas sitting around. And I think they make a pretty darn good breakfast if you're in a hurry (all that oatmeal and bananas plus not a lot of sugar - better than a lot of breakfast options out there!). You can even make them in muffin tins (they work great that way) if you want to make them into a more presentable-seeming breakfast food.

Sorry I don't have a photo. The cookies were gone before I remembered to take a photo!

Ingredients:
1/4 cup (1/2 cube) softened butter
1/2 cup ground flax seed (or another 1/4 cup butter if you don't have the flax seed but better with flax)
1 egg
1 cup mashed ripe bananas (2-3 overriped bananas - I just put them in the mixer w/o mashing first, works great)
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups white flour (or 1 cup white and 1/2 cup wheat)
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cloves or allspice
2 cups quick oats
1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans (optional)
1 cup chocolate chips

Instructions:
Mix together butter, flax seed, egg, bananas and sugar until somewhat smooth. Dump in flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and cloves and mix those in until incorporated. Then add the oatmeal one cup at a time while the mixer is going. Then mix in the nuts and chocolate chips. The batter will be somewhat shiny and stiff.

Put spoonfuls (or use a mini ice cream/cookie dough scoop - my favorite utensil) onto cookie sheets. They will spread a bit but stay sort of puffed up so they don't need to be really far apart on the sheet.

Cook at 350 F for 7-9 minutes (take out as soon as they get just slightly brown on the very edges).

Makes about 3 dozen (36) cookies.