Skinny Chunky Monkey Cookies

Pinned them, made them, loved them!

We’ll call this “Healthy Cookies-Part 2”, as Kelly recently blogged about hers here.

If the cute name doesn’t hook you in, the short ingredient list will. Who doesn’t  have a few extra ripe bananas and some oats laying around? And they contain chocolate! Yes, a healthy cookie with chocolate. Sign. Me. Up.

Ingredients:

3 ripe bananas
2 cups old-fashioned oats
1/4 cup creamy peanut butter
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/3 cup unsweetened applesauce
1 tsp. vanilla extract

They were extremely easy to make. Preparation was about 5 minutes or less. I’m not going to post the picture of them after they came out of the oven…you can use your imagination as to what they sort of reminded me of….but they were good. Really good. I loved them, and so did the kiddos.

Now, not only are they healthy, they can be pretty allergy free if you sub out the peanut butter for Sunflower Seed Butter, or Soy Nut Butter. Otherwise, they don’t contain eggs, butter, milk or flour.

So here’s the million dollar question. When does it go from being a healthy cookie to just a regular old treat?  Remember the whole Snackwell’s craze in high school? “Wait, these cookies are Fat Free?! Let’s eat the whole sleeve. They won’t make you fat, they’re Fat Free!” Oh, on the contrary my friends. On the contrary.

 I figure I probably ate about 6 or 7 within a 12 hour period. A couple when they came out of the oven, a few after dinner, and one as a before bedtime snack with my vitamin. And don’t forget about the batter. That always equals a cookie or 2 whether you like to admit it or not. At 47 calories each, according to the bloggers post, I was up to about 330 calories in “healthy cookies.”

So I compared it to my all time favorite cookie: Mrs. Fields Semi Sweet Chocolate Chip

Nutrition Facts

Serving Size 11.00000 cookie (60.0 g)

Amount Per Serving

Calories 290 Total Fat 14.0g14.0 290 126

Hmm….calorie for calorie, one Mrs. Fields is actually less than the 7 Skinny’s that I ate.  But the overall fat content is much higher. So what’s a gal to do? I think I’ll stick with the healthy cookies, and try to have a little more self restraint next time I make them.  I mean, I really made them for the kids. Who knew I’d be the one eating the most!

So here's the Pin, in case you want to try them out for yourselves.

And don’t be surprised if you see Healthy Cookies Part 3, 4, 35, etc…as we’re sort of, and always have been, obsessed with healthy treats. Just ask Kelly about her mom’s famous low fat brownies….