I love buying a large bunch of bananas. I only eat but one or two in its fresh form, so when they reach the “ugly” stage and are a little too mushy and sweet for eating, I have a good excuse to bake.
Not only are these soft, cake-like cookies grain-free and vegan, they are sweetened only with fruit — you guessed it, bananas! Instead of baking an entire loaf of banana bread, I opted for built-in portion control in the form on cookies 🙂 Soft, muffin-like cookies that are reminiscent of the popular quick bread most of know and love. I added chopped walnuts and a handful of golden raisins for some texture, but feel free to swap out your favorite add-ins such as chocolate chips, pecans, dried cherries or even chopped candied ginger for a different twist.
With a short list of ingredients and a snap to prepare, you can feel good about these treats…and even eat them for breakfast 🙂
Soft Banana Bread Cookies (Vegan, Grain-free)
Gluten-free, Vegan, Egg-free, Dairy-free, Peanut-free, Grain-free, Quick
Ingredients
2 1/2 cups almond flour or almond meal
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon (can add a pinch of other spices like nutmeg for a different twist too!)
1/4 -1/2 tsp sea salt
2 ripe large bananas or 3 small, mashed
1/4 cup creamy almond butter (or other nut butter)
1 Tbsp pure vanilla extract
1/4 cup chopped walnuts or pecans
1/4 raisins (I used golden raisins) or other dried fruit or mini chocolate chips/cacao nibs, optional
Directions
1. Line a baking sheet with a silicone mat or parchment paper. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. In a medium bowl, combine dry ingredients (almond flour through salt)>
3. In a separate bowl, mash together the banana, nut butter and vanilla.
4. Stir in dry ingredients until a dough forms.
5. Using a tablespoon (I oiled mine so the batter didn’t stick), scoop dough into rounded tablespoons on prepared baking sheet (or oil your hands well and rolls into balls if preferred but the dough is sticky!).
6. Bake for 12-14 minutes or until cookies are lightly golden brown on top. Remove from oven and let cool completely (be patient) before removing from baking sheet, otherwise they will fall apart 🙂 Enjoy!
Yields 28-30 cookies
Natural Noshing 
These look delicious! Can’t wait to make them and I have all the ingredients at home already 🙂
Hope you like them as much as I did 🙂
Can’t wait to make these!
Wow these look amazing! It’s been hard for me to find good recipes since going vegan but thanks to sites like yours it helps a lot. Thanks for sharing these yummy treats ! And they are gluten free even greater!!
Jim.
Okay, I’m not vegan so maybe I’ll get booed here … but our family is basically eating a Paleo diet, due to food sensitivities. We can’t have gluten, dairy, oats, eggs, soy, or millet. We also avoid any processed sugar, and prefer to use no sugar at all whenever possible. So, since this recipe fit into our diet, I made these cookies this evening; we all enjoyed them. They tasted very similar to the “Anytime Cookies” from the cookbook “Eat Like a Dinosaur” (Paleo), except those call for a blended apple in addition to a lesser amount of banana. Instead of raisins, I added chopped dates.
For the Anytime Cookies, I’ve substituted sunflower seed flour (ground at home) in place of the almond flour/meal. It turns out fine in texture, but the cookies do turn curiously dark green almost before your very eyes. It read that it’s due to a chemical reaction between the oil in the sunflower seeds and the baking soda. My kids don’t mind and it cuts the cost a bit because sunflower seeds are cheaper than almonds or almond meal/flour.
FYI, for this recipe, I used Trader Joe’s almond meal (sifted to remove a bit of the husk) and it worked fine. That brand of almond meal is often too coarse for some recipes, so I thought I’d mention that it’s okay in this one.
Tip: after the cookies cool, put the cooling rack of them in the freezer, pull them out after frozen, wrap them individually, stick them in a Ziploc freezer bag, and put bag in the freezer. This makes it easy to grab one or two to put in kids’ lunches or take on the go.
Thanks for the recipe. I have a feeling I will be making these again in the near future. ☺
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