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    • How to
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Banana Oat Cookies

May 20, 2015 Danijela Unkovich

These cookies tick all the boxes - they're nutritious, cheap, easy-to-make, really yummy and they require the simplest-of-simple ingredients list. Seriously, we're talking mashed banana, rolled oats, desiccated coconut, dried apricots, a sprinkling of chocolate chips, and THAT'S ALL.  They're also totally kid-friendly - get the kids involved in mashing the bananas, counting out the apricots and mixing all the ingredients together with their hands - it'll get a bit messy, but fun! 

A wonderful way to get kids more excited about what they're eating is to get them involved in the preparation process - it may require a little extra patience and time (and most likely clean up), but it's a great educational activity with the wonderful follow-on effect of getting them more invested at meal time (and so hopefully more inclined to try whatever is being served!). Of course, this might not be needed when it comes to eating cookies, but definitely something to keep in mind next time you have a pile of veggies to peel in front of you...

Banana Oat Cookies

Ingredients
4 mashed ripe bananas
2 1/2 cups of rolled oats
1/2 cup desiccated coconut
12 dried apricots, diced
1/4 cup chocolate chips (optional)
Sprinkle of cinnamon (optional)

Method
1) Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Line an oven tray with baking paper.

2) Add all the ingredients into a large bowl and mix together until well combined (a big wooden spoon or just your hands will do!).

3) Spoon out large tablespoons of the mixture and assemble into cookie shapes on the oven tray. I say assemble as it will get a little messy! You might need to spend a little time shaping them. A quick way to do it is to  get a cookie cutter and fill each one up with the mixture - when you remove the cookie cutter you'll get even circle shapes.

4) Bake the cookies in the oven for 12-15 minutes. Keep an eye on them for the last few minutes to make sure they don't burn.

5) Take them out of the oven and let them cool for 10 minutes before digging in. Enjoy!

Makes 10-12 cookies depending on how big you make them.

In kid friendly, sweet treats, snacks
← Banana Oat Pancakes Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups →

Hi, I'm Danijela! I'm a nutritionist from New Zealand. Welcome to my blog, a space I share healthy easy recipe ideas and wellness inspiration. 

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Muesli bowl before class today with sliced banana, a handful of blueberries, yoghurt, cinnamon, almonds, seeds (sunflower & pumpkin), a few heaped tbsp @deliciouslyella fruit and nut muesli, and a big dollop of peanut butter🤤 This breakfast recipe is really flexible - go for any fruit you need to use in your fruit bowl/whatever nuts and seeds in are in your pantry (e.g. shredded coconut, walnuts, chia seeds...)/your favourite yoghurt (e.g. dairy, coconut) - make it your bowl!💃 Great for popping in a jar/container and taking on-the-run too. #eatbreakfast #breakfasttime #breakfastideas #mueslibowl #breakfastbowl #breakfastlondon
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Classic cheesy London tourist shot - tick✔️💃 I’ve received lovely news from New Zealand...I’ve achieved my professional registration as a New Zealand Registered Nutritionist!🙂 To achieve this means I have met the academic requirements (bachelors degree), the necessary professional work experience (three years) and have had regular professional supervision with a supervisor, which now allows me to practise with the title of a Registered Nutritionist. Under this title I’ll continue with a commitment to ongoing professional development and conduct, as well as providing ethical, sound and safe nutritional information📚 Professionally, it’s a really, really nice milestone, and something I’ve been working towards for a while🙏🏻🙂 I adore working in this profession, and are looking forward to many, more years ahead! Thanks @jonny_goose for the snap🤳 #londoneye #classictourist #london
Super simple four ingredient orange and coconut macaroons🍊 These are so easy to whip up! Just mix in a bowl 1 mashed ripe banana, 1 cup shredded coconut and 1 small orange (2 tsp zest and 1 tsp juice). Spoon tbsp of the mixture into balls and flatten gently on a lined baking tray. Shape into a cookie, and then cook for 10-12 minutes in a 175 degree preheated oven. Watch carefully at the end as they can burn! Remove from oven and sit for 5 minutes. Then choc-dip - melt a few lines of dark chocolate, then dip in bottoms of macaroons or drizzle chocolate over the top, before placing in the freezer for a few minutes to set🤤 The banana adds naturally sweetness, while also acts to bind! I’m nearing my last week of culinary school - I can’t believe how quickly times gone😭👨‍🍳 Until then I’m knee-deep in culinary assignments this week before heading off to Italy the week after to eat my body weight in pasta🇮🇹 Any recommendations on Rome please send through💃 #sweet #sweettreat #macaroon #healthierdessert #dessert #coconut #yum #snack #snacktime Happy Monday☀️ Muesli bowl this morning with sliced banana, a big handful of berries, a few heaped tbsp muesli, nuts and seeds, plain yoghurt with a sprinkle of cinnamon, and nut butter🤤 Most of the food I eat I don’t post an image to Instagram, nor do I spend time styling it (unless maybe I’m cooking for loved ones💛). This platform is a great creative outlet, and I love sharing nutritious meal ideas, taking time to lay out ingredients to showcase what’s in a dish and *hopefully* make meal ideas look appetising enough to give a go - because so often we eat with our eyes!😊 But in reality, it really doesn’t matter how our food looks when we plate it up - just ask your stomach not long after you finish a meal😂 - nor will it affect nutritional quality💁‍♀️. While Instagram is an amazing place for inspiration, it’s also largely one big highlight reel. A lot of content we see when we scroll through our feed, no matter the niche, has had some time, thought, energy and editing behind it (sometimes even with a team of people!). This can be a beautiful creative thing, buuut if we start to compare our ‘everyday’ to it, it might leave us feeling a little off. I eat this bowl of muesli many days of the week, but the ingredients will be just chucked together into a bowl in the space of a few minutes - and it always tastes the same when I dig my spoon in💛 Just a spiel of thought! I’d be curious if you guys have any thoughts on this area. Have a great start to your week! #monday #breakfast #breakfastideas #breakfastbowl #muesli #muesliboowl #yoghurtbowl #blueberry #nutritiousmeal Edamame soba noodle salad for lunch🥗 Tossed with sautéed eggplant, courgette, shallots, tofu, soy sauce and a sprinkle of sesame seeds, and served with broccoli and avocado on the side. My latest blog post is up and is all about how to make vegetables more exciting!🍆🥦🥕 As a nutritionist I spend a lot of my days talking about how cool veggies are - but encounter many who don’t share quiteee the same enthusiasm as me😋💛🙏🏻 Sure, if we’re taking a limp ice-burg lettuce salad or boiled three-mixed vegetables...I will totally admit defeat💁‍♀️. But there’s tonnes of ways to make veggies more exciting, and I’ve shared tips that will have hopefully have you reaching back for seconds. Head over for a read, link in my bio. Do you have any tips of your favourite veggie-eating tips to share? #eatyourgreens #vegetablelove #healthymealidea #recipeidea #vegetables #healthblog #avocado #sobanoodles Lentil-veggie pasta for lunch🍝 One of my favourite simple meals - to prepare sauté an onion with a few cloves of sliced garlic, add a couple of handfuls of grated/chopped veg (e.g. carrot, courgette, mushroom, cherry tomatoes...), a handful of finely sliced fresh herbs (e.g. basil, parsley...), two tins of chopped tomatoes and a tin of drained brown lentils. Bubble away on the stove for fifteen minutes, season to your liking with S&P, and then serve with your pick of pasta. Perfect meal to power through the afternoon!🍝🏃‍♀️ On the note of pasta, this week I'll be sharing the role of carbohydrate-rich foods for runners over on the adidas Runners NZ facebook page. I'll be talking why they're often empahsised for runners, how our body uses them during a run, and what happens when we 'hit the wall' during a run - clue, it invovles carbohydrates! Auckland based friends, if you'd like to learn more, head over to the page and join the group - and I hope to see you at a run later this year in December once I'm home! @adidasnz #addiasRunnersAuckland #ambassador #pasta #lentilpasta #lentilbolognese #lunchideas #lunch It’s well and truly Autumn in London - so here’s some fall self-care ideas for my friends on this side of the world🍂😊 I’m cranking out the warm socks and have gone full soup/stew/curry mode! Whats your favourite thing about autumn? I love the colours on the trees🍁 Lovely image by @blessingmanifesting #autumn #autumninlondon #selfcare #selfcareideas Fish and chips🍟 One of my favourite easy dinner meals that's totally adaptable to whatever is in the kitchen - use whatever root veggies (e.g. kumara, potato, carrot, parsnips...), whatever fish fillet, and whatever veg! This is kumara (aka sweet potato) wedges, salmon with a heap of pesto, green veggies and some sauerkraut because I'm all on the preserving/fermenting buzz (thanks culinary school😅). To prep, slice any veg you’d like to roast into similar sized pieces and carefully cut your root veggies into wedges, and then toss with oil and S&P. Space out on an oven tray (so they don’t wind up steaming) and bake in a 200 degree celsius oven until starting to crisp, adding a fish fillet near the end of cooking time – depending on the size of your fillet it might take 8-15 minutes to cook! Serve with a heap of pesto (totally optional, but yum. I purchased a tub from the supermarket – for a quality tub look out for a high percentage of olive oil on the label), and some extra veg on the side of you please. Still not traditional fish and chips (this is on my British bucket-list before I leave!), but seriously tasty. #dinnerideas #healthydinner #recipeidea #fishandchips #fish #eatyourgreens #eatyourveggies Taking a quick break from all the food posts for a culinary school update!👨‍🍳😊 It was a little scary taking the second half of this year off full-time work/responsibilities/life in Auckland to head to London to pursue culinary training, but now that I’m in the midst of it I couldn’t be happier I took the plunge. I’m over half way through my course, and it has been really interesting, challenging and inspiring all rolled into one, and so good to finally scratch that ‘metaphorical’ itch of doing some training here (it only took a good few years of contemplating). The course I’m doing consists of practical culinary workshops and technique demonstrations, and lectures on sustainability, nutrition, food trends, covering everything from urban growing to food marketing to adapting recipes for allergies and intolerances – it’s great! It has challenged me to think outside my comfort realm of food, to think bigger, and to think more about sustainability and the global picture of food – the latter something I’m going to really work on integrating into my practice as a nutritionist, as sustainability is only going to become more and more pressing for us as a collective planet. Thanks for sharing the adventure with me, it’s been really nice getting all your comments on my stories☺️ Here’s a few snaps of things I’ve made/done so far - everything from pedantic knife skills, to fancy chocolate plates, to street food inspired bao buns, to delicious black bunned (charcoal) seaweed-tofu burgers that only took about four hours to make💃 Loving it all. Okay back to food pics! #culinaryschool #school #cooking #london #nutrition Porridge for breakfast topped with stewed honey-cinnamon apple chunks, plain yoghurt, a drizzle of nut butter, pecans, sunflower and pumpkin seeds🍎 Toppings can make a bowl of porridge immensely more exciting to eat, while also bumping up the nutrition! Fruit is a good source of fibre, vitamins, minerals and antioxidants; while nuts, seeds and yoghurts will add fats, protein, minerals and more to your bowl - all leading to a wider intake of nutrients and a more satisfied appetite👍 Just use up whatever’s in your pantry and fridge - any nuts, seed, fruit etc! To make the honey-cinnamon apples (nice on these chillier autumn mornings!), simply wash an apple (no need to peel - more fibre which your gut will love), chop into small chucks, place in a saucepan with a smidge of honey, a sprinkle of cinnamon, and a splash of water to prevent burning, and then bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer and cook until the fruit softens - you may need to add a few more splashes of water to keep it from sticking, so keep an eye on it. Otherwise you can also pop a lid on as it cooks, and then remove once softened and let the liquid reduce. Then enjoy! #breakfast #porridge #porridgelover #porridgebowl #breakfastideas #breakfastinbed #nutrition Rainbow platter🌈 Throwing it back to this colourful platter this evening while I’m eating boring leftovers and doing culinary assignments. I lurrrve platters! They’re fresh, colourful and brimming with options to suit everyone - perfect to serve up at a social gathering as a slow and relaxed way to eat. They’re also fun to put together - let your creative juices flow as you load up everything on the board...swirl crackers, pile things up, have some fun with it💃 When it comes to making epic healthier platters here’s some tips:🌈 Make it colourful! Different colours are indicative of different nutrients. Colourful veggie sticks serve as perfect platter-to-mouth vehicles for dips like hummus and pesto 🌈 Practicality wins - make things bite-sized for your guests 🌈 Go for seasonal produce - it’ll be tastier, cheaper and fresher! 🌈 Less is more never applies. Filling small gaps with items like nuts, berries or dried fruit will make your platter looks like it’s overflowing - abundance is the wow factor with platters! 🌈 Group like items together so it’s easy-to-eat - veggie sticks and dips, crackers and cheese, dark chocolate and fruit. For a more ideas and a detailed guide to building a healthy platter head to my blog and search platters - link in my bio now💃 Image originally shot for my friends at @regalsalmonnz #platter #grazingplatter #grazingplatters #eatarainbow #eatvegetables #nutrition #nourish #eatcolorful #healthyplatter Veggie-fry up for breakfast with sautéed mushrooms, spinach and tomatoes, avocado on toast (loving that avocado to toast ratio🥑), and an egg. I’m heading on a train to Edinburgh today!😊 I’ll be spending the next few days exploring the city, and venturing up to the Scottish Highlands and Loch Ness. I can’t wait, I’ve been told it’s beaaaautiful. Also have been told I can’t leave without trying the national dish of Scotland, Haggis - when in Rome, as they say💃💃 #travel #edinburgh #veggiefryup #eatyourveggies #eatyourvegetables #breakfastideas #breakfast #eatbreakfast #healthymeals #healthymealideas Toast and nut butter fuelling my morning🍞 What’s your pick? Left is peanut butter and banana, and right is almond butter and homemade blueberry chia jam (just mashed blueberries with chia seeds! I have a recipe on my blog). Good pre-run feed!🏃‍♀️🏃‍♀️ I'm really excited to be working with the @adidasnz Runners team over the next year, helping to educate and support their epic community in Auckland on ways that nutrition can support both their runs and health. Adidas Runners is an international community, open to anyone to join, which sees runners hit the pavement together to run the streets of their city! In Auckland, this happens every Tuesday, rain or shine, at 6pm at the adidas Performance store at 12 Custom Streets East, Britomart. Over on the adidas Runners NZ FB page look out for nutrtition tips and ways to maximise and use nutrition to our advanatage around runs, and once back from London later in the year I'll be at runs avaliable to chat everything and anything nutriton! Hope to see you there🏃‍♀️ #adidasRunnersAuckland #ambassador #toasttoppers #toasttoppings #nutbutter #chiajam #bananatoast #peanutbutter #almondbutter Grilled sesame chicken, green veggies, brown rice and smashed avo for lunch🥑 A lot of people enquire about where to start making positive changes in their diet, and the balanced plate model can be a great place to start - that is, aiming to have 1/2 plate veggies, 1/4 plate or a fist size of carb-rich foods (e.g. potato, rice, kumara, pasta...), 1/4 plate or a palm size of protein-rich foods (e.g. fish, eggs, legumes, tofu, chicken...), and a few servings of fat-rich foods (e.g. avocado, nuts, seeds, oils) at main meals. Of course, these portions can/may need to change depending on your health, activity levels, dietary needs etc, but is a nice general guide to help get in a wide variety of nutrients. Happy Friday💃 Have an awesome weekend. #lunchtime #lunch #lunchidea #healthymealideas #mealideas #nutrition #eatyourgreens Chocolate rice crispy treats🍫🤤 A take on the classic rice crispy recipe and it's gooey marshmallow, toffee, butter and rice bubble concoction. Nothing wrong with enjoying the real deal, but it’s also fun experimenting with alternative recipes! Instead of a base of pure rice crispy cereal, I've added nuts, seeds, coconut and other goodies, which give these the most incredible texture, bumps up the nutrition, and makes them very satisfying to eat. To help bind the slice I've used cocoa butter, mixed with cocoa powder, so they're so delicious and chocolatey🙏🏻 Here’s the recipe! ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Ingredients ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Dry mix ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ 2 cups rice crisp cereal ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ 1/2 cup slivered almonds ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ 1/2 cup sunflower seeds ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ 1/2 cup shredded coconut ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ 1/2 cup raisins 1/4 cup chia seeds 1/4 cup pumpkin seeds Toppings (optional): 1/2 cup mix of nuts/seeds/dried fruit e.g. sunflower seeds, slivered almonds, goji berries... ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Wet mix 2/3 cup cocoa/cacao powder 1/2 cup melted cocoa butter 1/2 cup runny honey or rice malt syrup 1 tsp cinnamon ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Method ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ 1. Line a 20.5cm x 20.5cm square cake tin with baking paper. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ 2. Add to a large bowl the rice crisp cereal, slivered almonds, sunflower seeds, shredded coconut, raisins, chia seeds and pumpkin seeds. Mix together with a spoon until evenly distributed. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ 3.. Add to a saucepan the melted cocoa butter and honey. Stir over a low heat until combined. Add cocoa powder and cinnamon, and mix well. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ 4.. Pour melted cocoa mixture over the dry mixture. Using a spatula gently toss until the dry mix is coated evenly. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ 5. Add mix into the lined square cake tin, and using the spatula gently press mixture into the tin until compacted tightly. 6. Wash and dry spatula. Sprinkle over top the optional toppings if using, and using the spatula press down the toppings. 7. Place in the fridge for an hour to harden. Remove and cut into bars or 8 bars or 16 squares. Store in freezer. These will soften at room temperature if left out for long. #chocolatelover #healthierdessert #chocolatericekrispies #ricekrispytreats #nzfood #nzfoodie #bakingrecipes #sweetreat It was lovely to share a meal with Ella from @deliciouslyella tonight to celebrate the launch of her new plant-based frozen meals🥕🥦🥒🍆 I’m continually inspired by her quest of making veggies cool and showcasing how yummy plant-based meals can be! The on-the-go food market has its challenges, as convenience doesn’t always equate to nutrition - so a huge hurrah for wholesome options like these popping up on the market🙏🏻 Swipe right for a loaded plate of the ready meal goods - the Thai yellow curry is my fav! #plantbasedmeals #plantbasedfood #frozenmeals #yum #onthegofood Vegetarian chili for dinner🌽🌶 This is one of my favourite plant-based recipes, and the dish I’d choose to serve up to those skeptical of a meat-free meal! It’s a super versatile as a meal base, perfect whether in a taco shell, with a handful of corn chips, loaded into a burrito, topped on toast, or mixed with brown rice; and really yummy served with a quick fresh tomato and cucumber salad, sliced avo and a dollop of yoghurt (use coconut to keep it strictly plant-based, or otherwise a plain yoghurt is really refreshing!). Nutritionally, it’s a good source of dietary fibre and protein, and is a super economic meal to make - the ingredients are inexpensive and it’ll feed an army! I cooked up a big batch today to store for the quick meals the next week ahead, because #studentlife 😅 Recipe link in my bio if you’d like to give it a whirl!#vegetarianrecipes #vegetarianchili #chilirecipe #vegetarianmeal #dinnerideas #dinneridea #tastymeal Muesli bowl before class today with sliced banana, a handful of blueberries, yoghurt, cinnamon, almonds, seeds (sunflower & pumpkin), a few heaped tbsp @deliciouslyella fruit and nut muesli, and a big dollop of peanut butter🤤 This breakfast recipe is really flexible - go for any fruit you need to use in your fruit bowl/whatever nuts and seeds in are in your pantry (e.g. shredded coconut, walnuts, chia seeds...)/your favourite yoghurt (e.g. dairy, coconut) - make it your bowl!💃 Great for popping in a jar/container and taking on-the-run too. #eatbreakfast #breakfasttime #breakfastideas #mueslibowl #breakfastbowl #breakfastlondon Berry sponge cake🍓🍰 Layered with berries, jam, cream and pomegranate seeds🤤 One of the great, yet totally underrated, aspects of food is that it’s a chance to be creative! When we think creativity, we often automatically think art, like painting, drawing or dancing, but food can be too. Regardless of how a dish looks at the end - playing in the kitchen, whether we’re chopping/dicing/mixing, experimenting, using our senses (smell, taste, touch...), and turning simple ingredient into something more exciting - is a form of creative expression. It also shifts our focus and attention to the task at hand, no matter whether we’re weighing ingredients or sautéing, helping to reduce stress, making it a mindful movement in many ways. So much of what I make in the kitchen turns out not as a I imagined or totally fails, but that’s okay! It’s not always about the end product, but what you learn along the way. #baking #cake #berrycake #spongecake #cakeideas #berrygood Lentil and cherry tomatoes spaghetti for dinner🍝 My favourite cheap and cheerful meal! This is a great plant-based recipe for everyone, but I highly recommend it my vegan and vegetarian friends as a bolognese substitute☺️ Here’s the simple recipe I follow: heat a good drizzle of olive oil in a pan and then sauté a diced brown onion and a few cloves of sliced garlic until soft. Add 1x finely grated courgette and carrot, and a handful of sliced button mushrooms. Sauté for five minutes and then add 1 big jar of tomato passata or plain pasta sauce, a decent sprinkle of salt and pepper, and a handful of cherry tomatoes. Give it a mix and let it all simmer for 15-20 minutes! Then add a tin of drained and rinsed brown/green lentils, a good handful of finely chopped herbs (optional, but good! e.g. basil, parsley...) and let is simmer for another five. While simmering cook your favourite pasta - then serve! YUM. Always, always add veggies to your pasta sauce - it’s a great way to add both flavour AND increase the nutritional vaule of your meal💃 #dinneridea #plantbasedmeal #dinnerrecipes #dinner #healthymealidea #bolognese #plantbasedprotein One of the most reliable healthy hacks - if you’re in the kitchen cooking, always cook a little extra so you can eat again! You’re in the kitchen anyway, so might as well help future you out💃 Dinner tonight is roasted chickpeas and veggies with spinach, avocado and big dollop of hummus. After spending six glorious hours whipping up desserts at school today(and sampling each one, multiple times, of course), the veggies were calling my name tonight. For this I tossed tinned chickpeas (drain and rinse first!), cauliflower and a medley of veggies from the fridge (red and yellow capsicum, courgette..) with a drizzle of oil, salt, pepper and spices (I did sumac and paprika tonight, but you can do whatever you feel like! Dried oregano and basil is great for Italian flavours; turmeric, cumin and coriander for Indian; paprika, cumin and cornaider for Mexican🤤), and then roasted the tray at 200 degrees until the veggies were tender on the inside and slightly charred on the outside! If you give it a whirl try to cut the veggies to similar sizes so they cook evenly, and make sure to keep an eye on the tray as some veggies cook quickly than others! I reckon one of the most versatile items you can meal prep is a tray of roasted veggies, they’re just as great cold on a salad the next day👍 🤤#roastedveggies #eatyourveggies #dinnerideas #leftovers #eatarainbow #vegetables Classic cheesy London tourist shot - tick✔️💃 I’ve received lovely news from New Zealand...I’ve achieved my professional registration as a New Zealand Registered Nutritionist!🙂 To achieve this means I have met the academic requirements (bachelors degree), the necessary professional work experience (three years) and have had regular professional supervision with a supervisor, which now allows me to practise with the title of a Registered Nutritionist. Under this title I’ll continue with a commitment to ongoing professional development and conduct, as well as providing ethical, sound and safe nutritional information📚 Professionally, it’s a really, really nice milestone, and something I’ve been working towards for a while🙏🏻🙂 I adore working in this profession, and are looking forward to many, more years ahead! Thanks @jonny_goose for the snap🤳 #londoneye #classictourist #london

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