Susan Saradon's Skinny Banana Chocolate Chip Cookies

Tonight I came home thinking I need a dessert! It's Friday night and after a long week (can't really say a long hardworking week, more just long) I figured I need a treat. After passing up the offer of drinks at Hooters with some co-workers, I thought about the usual ice cream run, not good having a drive-thru Baskin Robbins less than five minutes away. But I then thought about the guilt of showing up to my free bootcamp class tomorrow morning after eating that, so I decided to look online for some "healthy" yet tasty dessert recipes with the little chocolate chips I had left in my house.
I came across Bethanny Frankel's version of Susan Sarandon's Banana-Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies. Now I'm not sure if this is her healthy version of Susan Sarandon's recipe or she actually made this for the actress, as I know she is a celebrity chef, but I thought hey if they are good enough for Susan Sarandon, they will be good enough for me. Now a few warnings here. 1. You have to like the taste of banana for these cookies to work for you. Luckily I do. I have a banana almost every morning with my oatmeal so this is kind of like my breakfast just with chocolate chips thrown in and in a different way. (Oh maybe I'll have them for breakfast too...) 2. The dough is VERY sticky! It was a little difficult to get the chocolate chips mixed in enough so I tried mixing in the chocolate chips by hand and came back with a fistful of dough. I would recommend refrigerating the dough for about half hour and it's easier to make into a ball for baking.
So after 15 minutes the smell of chocolate chips and banana filled the house up and I sneaked a peek at the lumpy dough that had fluffed up to a nice textured cookie. It took some restraint to wait until they were cool enough to eat without burning my mouth. In the words of Tony the Tiger - they were GREAT! So try these cookies if you have a sweet tooth like mine and a guilty conscience like mine. They were very tasty.
A tip for storing your cookies and keeping them soft that I got from my mom years ago. Store them in a air tight container with a slice of bread. The bread will get hard and soak up all the air that would have penetrated your cookies.
The recipe is as follows: (copied-right off the internet)

Ingredients:
1 cup oat flour
3/4 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/3 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup raw sugar
1/3 cup canola oil
1/3 cup plain soy milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 ripe banana, cut into small pieces
1/4 cup chopped walnuts or other favorite nut
1/3 cup semisweet vegan chocolate chips (such as Tropical Source)

Instructions:
1. Preheat oven to 350°. Combine first 6 ingredients (through sugar) in a bowl. Whisk together oil, soy milk, and vanilla in a separate bowl. Add wet mixture to dry ingredients; stir to combine. Fold in banana, walnuts, and chocolate chips.

2. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Scoop dough onto pan with a small ice-cream scoop. Bake 25 minutes or until golden brown, turning baking sheet halfway through. Let cool on a wire rack.

Prep: 10 Minutes
Cook: 25 minutes
Makes 16 cookies

Nutrition: And look they are good for you....
Calories 138; Fat 8g (sat 1g, mono 4g, poly 2g); Cholesterol 0mg; Protein 2g; Carbohydrate 16g; Sugars 9g; Fiber 1g; Iron 1mg; Sodium 114mg; Calcium 16mg