Week 9 Dish 2: Vegan strawberry banana coconut cookies

Seems like it's a cookie week for me! Cookies are just so easy to make and perfect to snack on. I still had 3 more very ripe bananas to use (I don't like wasting good food) and managed to buy some more strawberries, which were also starting to go bad. So I found a recipe which used both. I still had more bananas and strawberries than the recipe needed so I decided to make a strawberry banana milkshake too (recipe coming soon). Safe to say my family loved both the recipes, I mean, you can't go wrong with strawberries can you?!

Makes 18-24 cookies

Ingredients

2 cups oats (make this recipe gluten free by using gluten free oats!)

1/4 cup oat flour (or process some oats into a fine powder)

1 cup desiccated coconute/ coconut flates

2 tbsp ground flaxseeds/ linseeds

1/2 cup almonds, roughly chopped

1/4 tsp salt

2 medium bananas, mashed

2 tbsp maple syrup/ agave nectar/ honey

1/4 cup coconut oil, melted

1 cup roughly chopped strawberries

1 tsp vanilla extract

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C. Line two baking trays with grease proof paper.
2. In a large bowl, mix the oats, oat flour, desiccated coconut, flaxseeds/linseeds, almonds and salt.
3. Stir in the bananas, maple syrup, coconut oil, strawberries and vanilla until well combined.
4. Form 2 1/2 inch balls with your hands, place onto the trays and flatten gently. You don't need to leave a lot of space between then, they don't spread at all.
5. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until golden brown. Cool on the trays for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

Original recipe: Strawberry coconut breakfast cookies