Healthy Oatmeal Banana Cookies

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What do you make when you have ripe bananas that need used up in a hurry? Well, I always make banana bread because I have no idea what else can be made with bananas.  I've been seeing fudges and cookies that use banana on pinterest. This makes me happy because I can finally try something other than banana bread. Well, we were getting ready to go camping and I had some bananas that needed used so I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to try out some banana cookies. Sounds like a good camping snack, right? Well, the only recipes I had pinned needed baking soda, which, strangely I didn't have in my cupboard. I really didn't want to go to the store so I decided to do a google search to see if I could find something that didn't need baking soda. I was looking around and saw an extremely easy and healthy a recipe on both Food.com and All Recipes. Now it only used 5 ingredients so I was a little skeptical about how they might turn out when it came to consistency. I read through the reviews. Everyone seemed to love them, but a lot of people used applesauce instead of oil or added some spices to add a little flavor. I decided to give them a try and used some of the advice in the reviews. The result was a delicious and chewy cookie, definitely something I'll make again if I need to use up bananas.

Healthy Oatmeal Banana Cookies

• 3 ripe bananas
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1/2 cup applesauce
• 2 1/2 cups rolled oats
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 cup chocolate chips (or try raisins, craisins, dates, apple chunks, etc.)

Preheat oven to 350F. Mash bananas and lemon juice with a fork. Add applesauce, oats, spices and vanilla to banana mixture. Stir in chocolate chips. Drop small spoonfuls of dough onto a lightly greased cookie sheet. Flatten cookie drops into cookie shapes. (These cookies do not spread so they will stay in whatever shape you bake them in.) Bake for 20-25 minutes.