Banana Oat Breakfast Bars & Baby Banana Finger Food Snack

What do you do with really ripe bananas?  You make breakfast cookies of course. 

These are very simple and packed with flavor.  And did I mention super healthy.  No egg, no flour, no sugar!  My kids ate them up quick too. Original recipe was found HERE.

 

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups oatmeal, quick or old fashioned ~ uncooked

2 ripe bananas, mashed

1 cup unsweetened applesauce ( I used our homemade applepearsauce)

1/3 cup raisins, or craisins (the craisins give it a nice sweet bite to it)

1/4 cup chopped walnuts, toasted (or regular, if you prefer) ** see below

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp cinnamon (or more, to taste) 

 

**We have a nut allergy in our house so we omitted the walnuts however, I think the next time we make them we will add hulled pumpkin seeds, or sunflower seeds.

***The possibilities for add in are endless.  How about chocolate chips, coconut, other dried fruit, seeds, etc..  Over at Watching What I Eat, she has other breakfast cookie ideas.

Directions
Preheat heat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix vanilla extract & cinnamon into the applesauce.

Blend applesauce mixture with all other ingredients & let sit for 10 minutes

Drop cookie dough, by spoonfuls, onto a parchment paper lined cookie sheet & flatten cookies into rounds.

Bake approx. 20 - 30 minutes, or until golden & done.

Remove from oven & let rest on cookie sheet for 5 minutes, then move to cooling rack.
 
Store in a covered container when completely cool.

 

 

And we can't forget our little Dimples.  She can't have the craisins so we made her her very own rendition. The original recipe can be found HERE.  However, I omitted the salt.  Babies don't really need the salt and they tasted fine without it.

 

Ingredients

2 cups quick oats
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp nutmeg
2-3 overripe bananas, mashed
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 Tbsp coconut oil, melted

 

Directions

Preheat heat oven to 350 degrees.

Grind 1 cup of oats into a powder and put into a bowl

 

Mix the rest of the oats to the powder mix, plus the salt, cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg

Mash bananas

 

Mix vanilla and coconut oil to the bananas, then mix it into the dry ingredients

 

Pipe dough, onto a parchment paper lined cookie sheet

 

Bake approx.12 minutes, or longer if you prefer them to be a little harder

Remove from oven & let rest on cookie sheet for 5 minutes, then move to cooling rack.
 
Store in a covered container when completely cool. 

 
 
 

I used my vitamix to grind the oats, however, a blender or coffee grinder will do the trick.

 

 

 
 
 

To pipe, place the dough into a strong Ziploc bag and cut the end off one side.  Be sure to close the top especially if you will be having little helpers.

After awhile he got tired of piping and asked if he could make lines that we could just cut.  Smart kiddo.  Little did he know that is what the original blogger had recommended.  

She loved them....and so did everyone else.  I found myself sneaking pieces from her whenever I would feed them to her.

The end product almost looks like cooked sausage.  My sister in law actually asked what I was feeding her. 

 

Do you have any healthy snack recipes you would like to share?  They could be for baby, yourself, or the older kiddos.  I would love to hear and try them.