Semi-Healthy Peanut Butter Cookies

A tasty update to the traditional cookie, that happens to be gluten-free and vegan.

Your typical peanut butter cookie recipe calls for a whole bunch of flour, sugar and eggs,  which really weighs down the cookie, and certainly isn’t all that healthy. With this contemporary spin, using puréed banana instead of eggs and no flour, the true taste of the peanut butter shines through and go figure, it’s actually a lot healthier too.

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Cooking Time: 10 minutes

Servings: 2 Dozen Cookies

Ingredients:

• 1 1/4 cups All Natural Peanut Butter, crunchy and/or creamy, without added sugar, room temperature
• 1/2 ripe large Banana, room temperature 
• 3 tablespoons Honey
• 1/2 cup raw or granulated Sugar
• 1 teaspoon Baking Soda
• 1/2 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
• Optional embellishments:
• Jelly or Jam
• Chopped nuts: such as pecans, almonds, peanuts 
• Nutella*
• Chocolate Chips or Kisses*

*Nutella and chocolate contain milk, which negates the vegan

Directions:

Pre-heat oven to 325.

While still in its container, place the honey into a small bowl of hot water to soften it. Put your peeled banana into a blender or food processor and purée until smooth; OR toss into a large mixing bowl and with a potato masher, schmush it up. Add into the mixing bowl the peanut butter, baking soda, vanilla, honey and sugar. Using a hand mixer on low or a large spoon, thoroughly stir to combine. 

If using chocolate chips or nuts, gently stir them in. Using a spoon, scoop out some cookie dough, then roll it into a ping-pong-sized ball and place onto a cookie sheet, preferably lined with parchment paper. If the dough is a little sticky, dip your fingers into some room temperature water before rolling into balls. Repeat for the rest of the cookies, placing them about an inch apart. 

For old-school cookies, using a fork dipped in water, make crosshatch marks across the top and flatten them out slightly. 

For thumbprint cookies, dip your thumb (or a finger) into some water, push down into the middle of the cookie, then fill with a 1/4 teaspoon of jelly, jam, Nutella or a chocolate kiss.

Into the oven they go for 10-12 minutes. Keep an eye on them so they don’t burn. Once they’re done, place onto a rack to cool for a for about 10 minutes.

Note: The cookies will be soft when they first come out of the oven, be sure not to disturb them until cool. 

As an added treat, place a scoop of softened vanilla ice cream or frozen yogurt in between two cooled cookies and freeze for a couple of hours for a tasty ice cream sammich!