Weird PB Banana Oatmeal Cookies

I was in the mood to bake and thought I'd try something a bit different. I was just shy of having enough brown sugar on hand for most of the recipes that sounded interesting to me, except for these oatmeal peanut butter banana cookies.

The fact that they were from Dr. Oz's website should have raised a red flag. Another red flag was that they have hardly any sugar in them. And by hardly any sugar, I mean there is 2 T from Honey/agave and the fructose in two bananas. But because they are from Dr. Oz his followers are brainwashed to believe that anything he spews out of his mouth or on his website must be full of awesome.

These cookies were the antithesis of awesomeness.

They were super bland. Not only were they not sweet, which is a no brainer if you think about it. They had zero flavor. I couldn't taste any peanut butter OR banana. Very, very odd.

And the picture of the cookies on the website?  Oh they could not possibly be of cookies made from this recipe.  They look like cookies that were made with a lot more flour than just 1/4 cup.

Here's the photo from Dr. Oz's website:

Source

And here's a cross section of the cookies I made:

They don't even look done in the middle.  AND this is after baking them for 20 minutes when the recipe states you only need to cook them for 13-16 minutes.

I tried smashing them flat in hopes of getting them a little crisper on the inside.  No dice.  Even after flattening the cookies as thin as I could, and cooking them for 20 min, the middles were still on the soggy side.

Now I'm a fan of gooey under baked doughy in the middle cookies.  But these cookies?  Ick.  It was more of a gummy, chewy, underdone sort of middle.  Not a pleasing texture at all.

I wracked my brain to find a way to salvage these treats.  I even schmeared on a nice thick layer of dulce de leche.  Even that didn't do much to improve the taste of these little villains.

Then it hit me!

The inside of these cookies reminded me of when you cook a bowl of oatmeal in the microwave. You know, the oatmeal gets a bit rubbery because the oats have soaked up all the moisture.  All you need to do is add milk and the texture goes from spackle, back to that of something edible again.

So for breakfast the next day, I crumbed up the rest of the cookies in our bowls along with walnuts, a sprinkle of brown sugar and cinnamon, popped it into the microwave with some milk, and TA DA! 

Delicious breakfast!

Mrblocko and Blockette added raisins to their oatmeal cookie bowls.  That's not my thing so I had mine "plain."

I can see the merits of making a batch of these cookies for the specific purpose of using them for a quick breakfast, but for just the cookies?  No way.

Dr. Oz's Weird Peanut Butter Banana Cookies that You Should Just Eat Crumbled up in a Bowl Like Oatmeal
2 ripe bananas
1/3 cup peanut butter
2 tbsp 2% milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp agave or Honey
1 large egg
2 1/2 cups quick-cooking or rolled oats
1/4 cup whole wheat flour
Dash ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350°F. Make banana puree by mashing the bananas with a fork until smooth. Whisk in the peanut butter, milk, vanilla, agave, and egg. Add the remaining ingredients and stir until well combined.

Drop dough onto a cookie sheet that has been sprayed or lined with parchment paper. Bake 13-16 minutes or until pale golden brown. Cool for 5 minutes.