Banana Chocolate Chip Cookie Bites

I've been trying to find simple dessert recipes that don't require too many ingredients. And I needed to use up some ripe bananas sitting on my counter. When I stumbled across the following recipe, I thought it might be just the thing. It was! The cookies turned out great even with my modifications. These cookies are not your typical chewy or crunchy cookie -- instead, they're more like a soft-baked cookie or even a brownie in consistency. And they're close to bite-size, which means you can eat several, and then go back for just one more. Another version I found includes chopped dried dates, which I might try sometime if I remember to buy some dates.

Banana Chocolate Chip Cookie Bites
makes about 20 to 24 cookies

Ingredients:

• 1 and 1/3 cup Bob's Red Mill gluten-free rolled oats
• 1/4 cup of oats
• 3 Tbsp. flax seed meal. I used Bob's Red Mill brand.
• 1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp. sea salt
• 1/4 tsp. baking soda
• 1 cup of mashed ripe banana (about 2 medium bananas)
• 2 Tbsp. canola oil
• 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract. Use Trader Joe's alcohol-free vanilla extract or another vanilla extract that does not have corn syrup and is preferably alcohol-free, since the alcohol could be derived from corn. Recently I have been using Rodelle Vanilla Flavor alcohol free all natural extract, which I found at Stop and Shop.
• 1/2 cup dairy-free semi-sweet chocolate chips. The two kinds I use that do not contain milk fat are Trader Joe's semi-sweet chocolate chips and Ghirardelli semi-sweet chocolate chips.

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a food chopper, briefly chop the 1 and 1/3 cup oats and pour them into a large bowl. Add the 1/4 cup of oats to the food chopper and chop them until they are finely ground. Pour the ground oats into the large bowl. Add the flax seed meal, cinnamon, sea salt, and baking soda, and stir all of the dry ingredients to combine.

Peel the bananas and cut them into 1/2-inch wide rounds. Place these banana pieces in the food chopper and chop until the banana is completely pureed. Measure out 1 cup of mashed banana and pour it into a medium bowl. (If your two bananas do not equal 1 cup, you can make up the difference with some unsweetened applesauce.) Add the canola oil and vanilla extract to the bananas and stir to combine.

Pour the banana mixture into the bowl with the dry ingredients and mix thoroughly. Stir in the chocolate chips. Then place tablespoonfuls onto the baking sheet. (I used a cookie dough scoop, which measures a little more than 1 tablespoon per cookie. The original recipe says to measure about 2 tsp. of dough per cookie.) If you would like, you can press down slightly on the balls of dough.

Bake the cookies for about 14 minutes, until the tops are lightly browned. Remove the sheet from the oven and let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool further.