Help, I can’t stop sneaking these cookies!

One of my fave “healthy food your kids will actually eat” chefs -- Catherine at Weelicious -- just posted a new no-sugar no-butter recipe for Banana Oat Chocolate Chip Cookies and it is delish. Really!

It was too freakin’ hot to go to the park today (at least for wussy old me), so instead I promised the girls we could bake something when they came home from school. And (oh so fortuitously) this recipe popped up on my RSS reader right before I pointed the van at the Kindergarten pickup line. So I printed it out, stopped at the store and grabbed two items that weren’t already lurking in the pantry, and our eager twin chefs set to work.

So we pulled up the Weelicious recipe (go there for the exact directions – she also has nifty printable recipe pages on her site, which is handy) and rolled up our sleeves.

This was right up our alley. We gathered the ingredients below (Ree arranged them for me, saying “Here mama, take a picture for the blog.” Ha!):

She also drew me a picture of the ingredients, in case I wasn’t quite clear. From top to bottom, those are banana pieces, dates, a big blob of oil, chocolate chips, and a firm reminder about the oven temperature. Not sure what the green blob is in the upper right corner... Any guesses?

A few notes: we used Quaker Oaks because I kind of suck at reading recipes beforehand and the cookies turned out just fine. Our dried dates were pre-pitted and pre-chopped, but the pieces still seemed too big so I cut them up even smaller. And given the choice of Chocolate Chips, Walnuts or Raisins, you KNOW we used chocolate chips, right? The semi-sweet mini morsels.

Then we got to mashing, measuring, and mixing. Ro and Ree insist on doing everything themselves when they’re baking, so quality control in our kitchen is extremely variable. You’ll notice that my NASA-engineer dad was attempting to inject some QA. And I’m thinking (judging by the number of stirring implements Ro and Ree kept grabbing and tossing into the mix), that he had his hands full. Heh.

I don’t have any more pictures of the mixing process, because stuff was getting flung all over and I was a little busy running here and there, grabbing pans, and trying to keep their hands and tongues out of the bowl. Anyhow, we dropped spoonfuls onto 3 pans and popped them all in our convection oven at once. And looky what came out!!

Hooboy, these are good!!!

Now don’t be hating on that lack-of-butter-and-sugar thing. I was skeptical too at first. Thought the girls would at least have fun making them, and if they didn’t taste good, well honestly no one would care. Oh I was SO WRONG. These mostly-guilt-free cookies taste like warm little chocolate-chip banana-bread bites. Yum!!!!

After the enthusiastic sampling, I tried to get a pic of the girls holding another set of cookies and smiling, but Ree couldn’t resist sneaking hers towards her nose and sniffing deeply.

“Oh mama, it just smells soooooo good!”

Then Ro had to get another whiff. Ree’s blissful face here cracks me up:

Happy girls. Happy mama. We ate I’ll-never-tell-how-many tonight, and Ro and Ree will find one of these in their school snack bentos tomorrow (if I can show a little willpower and restrain myself from eating them all).