Oatmeal Banana & Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

This is one of the first "cookies" I learned when I went vegan. Just five ingredients...though I add a few extras myself. This recipe is easy to scale up. Here, I've scaled it down to about 6 cookies so it's okay to eat them all.

1 very ripe banana (you want it to be easily mashable and sweet)

3/4 cup rolled oats

1/4 cup peanut butter (buy the good stuff)

1/4 tsp salt if you want (I tend to skip because I use salted peanut butter)

eyeball chocolate chips (Simnett says 1/2 cup, but I never measure)

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Additions not in Simnett's recipe are:

a spoonful or two of cacao powder (this can dry the cookie out if you use too much)

a splash of vanilla

walnuts (Julie likes the nuts, I personally skip if it's just for me)

This is super easy:

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Mash the banana in a bowl real good. Add the oatmeal and mash that in with the banana. You don't need to, but I like to do it this way to break up the oatmeal a little bit. Stir in the peanut butter & salt. Stir in the cacao powder and vanilla. Fold in the chocolate chips and nuts if you're using. You can put everything together at one time, but doing it in stages makes mashing the banana a lot easier.

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Bake at a 350 degree oven for about 10-12 minutes.