Healthy Cashew Butter & Banana Cookies

  • Healthy Cashew Butter and Banana CookiesThese are very healthy, so don’t ever say that “More Sweets, Please” is all about sinful, sweet, rich, decadent, unhealthy, over the top desserts.  (I would actually consider that to be a real compliment.)
    No, these cookies are the cousins of the Healthy Almond Butter & Dark Chocolate Chunk Cookies, and they upped the fiber ante by adding in ground flax seeds.
    According to my second favorite kitchen book, The Flavor Bible (an amazing book that tells you what tastes good with what), cinnamon is a natural match with cashews- so you’ll find a nice hit of the sweet and spicy spice in these cookies.  (My favorite, favorite food book is What to Drink With What You Eat, by the same people that did the other book.  The title pretty much explains what it’s about.  As I like to drink almost as much as I like to bake… it comes in handy in our household.)

    So enjoy these clean-eating cookies- perhaps with a glass of riesling, which is apparently a good match with the bananas and nuts :)

    2 cups whole-wheat pastry flour

    2 tablespoons ground flax seeds

    1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

    1 teaspoon baking soda

    3/4 teaspoon salt

    2 medium ripe bananas, mashed

    1 cup unsalted natural cashew butter

    1/2 cup agave syrup

    1/4 cup Sucanat

    2 teaspoons vanilla

    1. Preheat oven to 350° and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
    2. In a medium bowl, combine flour, flax seeds, cinnamon, baking soda and salt; set aside.
    3. In a large bowl, mash bananas well and stir in cashew butter, agave syrup, and vanilla until combined.
    4. Stir banana mixture into dry mixture until just combined. Scoop dough by rounded tablespoons onto prepared baking sheet, and press gently to flatten (with a fork if you’d like the cross hatch design).
    5. Bake cookies for 10 minutes, until lightly browned.  Place cookie sheet a cooling rack and allow to cool on the pan for a few minutes before transferring cookies to rack to finish cooling.

    Tips:

    • Substitutions?  Yes, I figured you’d be looking for those.  If you don’t have whole wheat pastry flour (which you really need to get, as it’s a sneaky way to surreptitiously fit whole grains into your life), sub in half whole wheat flour and half all purpose.  As for the agave syrup, it’s a cool sweetener that’s totally natural and low on the whole glycemic scale… but real maple syrup will work well, too (and it’ll taste great as well).  If you don’t have Sucanat (I don’t expect you to, but you should seek it out in the organic area of your grocery store- think of it as healthy sugar), brown sugar will work in a pinch.  No cashew butter?  You could use any other natural nut butter, like peanut butter or almond butter.  Just don’t use a sweetened one… and if you do, well, reduce the Sucanat/brown sugar by 2 tablespoons.
    • Ripe bananas, baby!  When I made these cookies, the bananas were black- like 15 minutes away from being moldy (I’m kidding, sort of).  The darker the banana, the more banana-ey flavor you’ll get.  (So don’t use a pure yellow banana, in other words.)
    • Feeling lazy?  You could always bake into a 9 x 9″ pan (lined with foil and greased) for 20 – 25 minutes and then cut into bars.  The texture will be different (like a really dense, healthy bread)… but just explain to people that they’re really healthy and they’ll understand.  (I sprinkled turbinado sugar and cinnamon overtop the bars before baking, to help ease the whole ‘healthy’ look/ feel/ taste thing.)
    • Enjoy without the guilt!
    Print Friendly, PDF & EmailClick Here to PRINT This Recipe Now!

    Related Recipes & Posts:


    April 14th, 2012 | More Sweets Please | No Comments | Tags: , , ,

Leave a Reply

* Name, Email, and Comment are Required