Originally, I was searching for kid-friendly breakfast cookies I could make for my son now that he’s a kindergartner. Sometimes, I think he must be an alien. He does not like pizza, bananas, and absolutely has hated applesauce since he was a baby.

After trying several recipes that he absolutely hated but that I thought were fine, I have given up on finding him a breakfast cookie he liked and started looking for one I liked instead. Luckily, he’s happy with a rotation of peanut butter apples, toast with peanut butter and honey, and cereal in a mug that he can eat on our way to school. My kid LOVES peanut butter.

I learned my eating habits from my mom. My mom was a working mom. She’d be stressed out trying to take care of all us kids as well as get ready for work and get us to school somewhat on time. I remember a few times being handed Little Debbies and being told, “it’s the same as a donut!” So I have not ever had much of an issue with eating junk food in the morning. But that needs to change. And maybe, one day, I’ll be able to convince the kid to eat something as easy as a breakfast cookie so I don’t have to clean up smeared peanut butter from his car seat every day.

Here’s where my journey began a few months back. I went to Pinterest, as every guilt-ridden working mom does. What I discovered is a bunch of complicated breakfast cookies and every single one seems to have bananas and applesauce as a prime ingredient. Two things my kid hates.

But I thought I could trick him. I almost succeeded. My problem was, that all the recipes I found called for flax seed (which we were out of), uncut oats (all I had was Quick Oats), and other healthy things I didn’t have – it’d been a while since our last grocery run. Plus, they all wanted the banana to be the star of the cookie. I needed to cover that taste up as much as possible.

So I looked at a few recipes to see how much ratio of banana to oats might work to hold the thing together and decided to create my own recipe. These cookies actually got a 1/2 a cookie eaten and the comment of “it’s not too bad” from my son. For me, that was a win. For those of us in the house who DO like bananas, we thought these were quite tasty. They were good enough that I didn’t get a chance to take more than one picture.

The next time, I made a recipe that didn’t call for bananas. I’m making a recipe that doesn’t have bananas. You could still slightly taste it.

Banana and Chocolate Breakfast Cookie

• Prep Time: 10 minutes
• Cook Time: 15-18 minutes
• Yield: 10-12 large cookies
• Serving Size: 1-2 cookies

Ingredients: 

• 4 TBSP Honey
• 3 1/2 TBSP Oil
• 2 large eggs
• 1 tsp Vanilla extract
• 2 small mashed up bananas
• 2 cups quick oats
• 1/4 cup peanut butter
• heaping 1/2 cup chocolate chips (probably ends up being about 3/4 cup)
• 2 heaping TBSP Nutella
• 3/4 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp salt

Directions:

Note: You can do this by hand or use a mixer. I used a mixer because I’m lazy. But I tried stirring it, and it’s fairly easy to do.

1. Preheat oven to 325F.
2. In a large bowl combine honey, oil, and eggs. Stir.
3. Add vanilla and mashed bananas. Stir.
4. Add oats, peanut butter, Nutella, cinnamon, chocolate chips, and salt. Stir.
5. Use a serving spoon or a 1/4 measuring cup to scoop out a cookie. This should make between 10-12 large cookies.
6. Bake for 15-18 minutes. Mine took about 18 minutes.

These cookies end up looking a lot like Chocolate Peanut Butter No-Bake Cookies. But remember, these have eggs in them. They need to bake! And because of the bananas and eggs in them, I’d refrigerate leftovers to be safe.