Fruit Salad Cookies | No eggs, sugar, flour, or milk!

Over the past two weeks I have been sharing some pictures on my Instagram page including these two:

You see, I have been experimenting with this random recipe idea that popped into my head. I always saw bread and cakes and bars made without any traditional baking base ingredients but never any cookies. Or none that I found to be very tasty. So I set out to make my own.

After seeing some overripe bananas and some unused applesauce in my kitchen I had an AHA moment! FRUIT SALAD…cookies. Yes, fruit salad cookies.

I wanted to create a cookie that focused on fruits and so I set out to experimenting and I am pretty happy with the result (taste tested by a colleague of course)! These cookies are egg free, milk free, flour free, butter and oil free, AND SUGAR FREE!

You see, apple sauce and bananas both can substitute 1:1 for oils and sugar. So I figured why not combine the two into a base for a cookie knocking off two typical ingredients right there in favour of my fruit salad theme. The egg and flour are usually needed for structure but by using oats in the batter I negated the need for either of those. In fact, DO NOT use flour in these cookies! I learned the hard way that using flour in a fruit based recipe tends to lead to a rubbery dough due to the structure of the gluten.

When I introduced the first version of this cookie to one of my colleagues (the taste tester for this recipe since he was so enthusiastic about my blog) it was the rubbery version but he said the taste was all there. Fruit salad cookies pack a lot of flavour because they take the flavour right from the fruit! After tweaking the recipe I came back to him with two new versions and he narrowed it down to the final version you can see below.

Now I will have to bake a batch to bring to the rest of my coworkers now that the recipe is perfected. Who knows, maybe they will go over as well as the chocolate chip cookies, just with a healthy twist!

If you are ready to change it up in the kitchen, use the recipe below to make your own Fruit Salad Cookies.

Fruit Salad Cookies

1 banana, ripe and mashed
1 cup applesauce, unsweetened
1-2 tsp cinnamon
1-2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
1 tbsp honey
2 cups oats
1 cup dried cranberries
½ cup chopped nuts (pecans or almonds work best)
¼ cup strawberries, finely diced (optional)

1. Combine banana and apples sauce until banana is thoroughly mashed.
2. Add the cinnamon, vanilla, baking powder, salt and honey. Stir to combine.
3. Fold in the oats until a dough is formed. You may need to slightly adjust the amount of oats, just be sure that your dough is no longer sticky, sticky dough will not cook as well.
4. Finally, stir in your cranberries and chopped nuts.
5. Bake in a preheated oven at 350F for 10-15 minutes. Serve immediately or store in the refrigerator for up to a week (may be able to get more time out of it, I am still testing this).

Let me know what you think of the cookies and be sure to comment below with any twists you added to these already fruity cookies!