Cookies.  Any self-respecting, health-conscious person who cares about his or her waistline knows that cookies are verboten.  Totally taboo.  Or as my ‘favorite’ surgeon Dr. Oz proclaimed, “Your genetics load the gun.  Your lifestyle pulls the trigger.”

Cookie Monster Bandit courtesy of wave106.com

HAY-OHH!  Hold up, Dr. Oz – can you please rein in the drama for once?  I’m here to talk about cookies, not genetic gun control, okay?  Jeez.  Apparently you can’t be too careful about the contributors you invite into your blog space.

Ah-hem.  Where was I?  Cookies.  If I said that you could make the world’s healthiest cookie with just 2 ingredients – yes, TWO – you’d think I was drunk-blogging right now.  Why?  Because conventional wisdom tells us that A) cookies are not healthy and B) a two-ingredient cookie probably tastes like sawdust.  Dear Readers, I’d like to ask a favor of you.  Please suspend this belief just long enough to bake and taste these cookies yourself.   Trust me.

The following recipe yields just six large cookies, which is highly intentional.  For those of us who struggle with moderation, we really don’t need to bake more than six cookies at a time.  We know who we are, and we know I’m writing the truth.

Ingredients:

• 1 medium banana that is overly ripe (the riper it is, the sweeter it is, the better it is)
• ½ c. old fashioned oat meal (don’t use that instant shit – it really is sawdust)

Directions:

1. Preheat conventional oven (or toaster oven) to 350 degrees.
2. Spray a baking sheet with non-stick cooking spray.
3. In a bowl, mash the banana with a fork, and then mix in the oats.
4. If you used a particularly large banana and the mix seems a bit too wet, then add more oats until the mixture is cohesive enough to form cookie patties.  Place them on the baking sheet evenly spaced.
5. The size of the cookies is up to you; however, remember that smaller cookies require less cooking time.  I created 6 cookies from my ‘batter’ and used a toaster oven to cook them for 25 minutes (or until you see the edges/bottoms of the cookies turning deep brown – not black).
6. Let the cookies cool for about 5-10 minutes, and then marvel at the fact that you just created a 2-ingredient cookie.

Before you try them, let’s make sure your expectations are in check.  Don’t expect this cookie to taste like it came from the kitchen of Mrs. Fields or Famous Amos.  The reason their cookies taste so good is because they’re so bad for you.  Remember what went into our cookies in order to calibrate your thinking about what you’ll get out of them.

Okay.  Now try them.

Well?  What do you think?  Here’s what I thought when I tried the two-ingredient cookie for the first time:  “No way!  It worked!  With just two ingredients!  That’s crazy.  And that’s a pretty decent cookie.  Nicely portable, too, in case I need a hanger-squashing snack to-go.  Hmm… but these cookies could use a little something extra.  Perhaps more sweetness.  What to do, what to do…”

That’s when my creativity kicked in.  After testing the foundational recipe, I decided to improve the flavor profile without compromising the cookies’ healthiness.  So I made another batch, and this time I added the following ingredients:

The results:

Wow-oh-wow-oh-wow.  The texture and flavor of this batch made my taste buds do the Humpty dance.  Even better, using MyFitnessPal, I built the recipe to show you how the cookies’ superb nutritional profile remained intact:

After you make your first batch of basic, two-ingredient cookies, I strongly encourage you to get creative with other healthy ingredients.  For example, I plan to try this recipe using all-natural peanut butter in the mix.  As a peanut butter fanatic, I’m sure the whole batch will not last longer than 10 minutes once removed from the oven.

Finally, I want to leave you with a picture of reality.  While the Hangry Chicks are all about healthy eating, we’re also humans who have moments of weakness.  While in the kitchen, experimenting with iterations of the foundational recipe, I had a weak moment that involved Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.  I’m not advocating the replication of this experiment.  I’m merely sharing it with you to show what can happen if you try to bake cookies while you are hangry.  My hanger was an 8 at the time of this experiment.  The highly naughty cookies did not even make it to the cooling rack – 30 seconds after this picture was taken, they were gone.

RIP, naughty cookies.