Healthy Banana Bread Chocolate Chip Cookies
Sweetened with ripe mashed banana and brown sugar (plus some chocolate chips mixed in), these healthy banana bread cookies are perfect for those looking for a gooey and delicious cookie recipe that’s nutritious for you too. Made with whole wheat flour for extra fibre, plus coconut oil and applesauce so that they’re vegan too. They’re ready in 20 minutes, but I promise it’ll be hard for you to even wait that long!
A Wholesome Cookie To Satisfy Your Sweet Tooth:
Cookies are my love language. My OG chocolate chip cookies recipe is always a hit with friends, family, and my Instagram followers. I swear every time I post a link to the cookies it gets 10x more clicks than the other recipe links I share.
This cookie recipe is a little bit different. While still soft, chewy, and sweet, they’re more like a healthy chocolate chip cookie than a traditional one. I call them my banana bread cookies because they get a portion of their sweetness from ripe banana. And that sweet banana flavour comes through!
So if you’re looking for a wholesome dessert recipe to satisfy your sweet tooth, these banana bread chocolate chip cookies are definitely for you.
The Key Ingredients to These Healthier Cookies:
Everything in these cookies happens to be vegan, too!
- We use less sugar. While there is still some brown sugar in the banana bread cookie recipe, we use less of it!
- Mashed ripe banana. This is how I cut the added sugar while still maintaining the sweetness a cookie should have. The riper the banana, the more sweetness it will add.
- Unsweetened applesauce: We use this as lower fat alternative to oil or butter in this recipe (along with a little bit of coconut oil). Fun fact: it can also replace eggs in plant-based baking recipes.
- Whole wheat flour: I like to use this in these cookies the extra fibre and micronutrients compared to all purpose. That being said, if you don’t have it you can stick to all-purpose baking flour.
Dietitian reminder: While this cookie recipe is made with nutrient-dense ingredients, it doesn’t mean you’re morally being any better or worse by eating them. There’s a time and place for everything! Sometimes we want a healthy cookie, and sometimes we want a less-nutritious one!
Making Healthy Banana Bread Chocolate Chip Cookies:
Pro Tips from My Kitchen:
As a full-time recipe developer and chocolate chip cookie lover, I’ve learned that there are some things you can do to consistently to get the best results when baking these banana bread chocolate chip cookies:
- Use a cookie scoop instead of a spoon for more uniform cookies with that round cookie shape.
- Gently press these cookies down with the back of a fork before baking. Again, this helps with that round cookie shape.
- For better-looking cookies, add 3-4 chocolate chips on top of each cookie dough scoop before baking.
- A sprinkle of flaky sea salt before baking looks nice and balances out all the sweet with a little touch of salty.
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Healthy Banana Bread Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup coconut oil
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 1 medium ripe banana, mashed
- 2 tbsp unsweetened applesauce
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 cup whole wheat flour
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips, plus more for topping
Equipment
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350F. Grease baking sheet or line with parchment paper. In a mixing bowl, cream together the coconut oil and brown sugar.
- Mix in the mashed banana, applesauce and vanilla extract.
- Add whole wheat flour, baking soda, and salt. Gently stir to combine.
- Fold in the chocolate chips, then scoop cookie dough onto prepared baking sheet (approx. 1 tbsp per cookie).
- Top each with 3-4 chocolate chips, then bake in the preheated oven for 10-12 minutes. Transfer from baking sheet to a wire rack to cool, then enjoy.
Fan fave in our household. Super moist and delicious!
Yay! Thank you Alixis. 🙂
This is part of my regular cookie rotation. They come together super easily with minimal clean up, and they taste great. I tried frozen bananas with my last batch and it worked well!
I’m so glad to hear it worked well with frozen bananas, too!
I have a real sweet tooth and I have been baking cookies, cakes or buying them which were not healthy, so when I found this recipe I was really happy as I have to have something sweet every night. This is the third time I made them and love them, when I was making them second time I did not have apple sauce so I put few riped strawberries into a mixer and the cookies turned out great and the third time I still didn’t have apple sauce so I used raspberries and the cookies were great. These cookies will be my cookies from now on.
Thanks so much Sophie! I, too have to have something sweet every night. 🙂 Love that you tried them with berries, sounds like such a fun swap!
Can I substitute canola oil for coconut oil?
Yes, definitely!
Can I use coconut sugar instead regular brown sugar?
Yes!