Almond Banana Cookies

I have a really simple go-to peanut butter cookie recipe, as do many gluten-free bakers. Mix one cup of peanut butter (use the fake kind), one cup of sugar and one egg in a bowl and drop teaspoon-sized amount of the dough onto a baking sheet. Bake for about ten minutes; pretty easy, huh? They are awesome cookies and so simple to put together -- and really are crowd pleasers, but they're not that great for you. One cup of sugar? Processed peanut butter? Fine in moderation, but I needed an everyday cookie.

Nutritionally speaking, almonds are great (to find out how great, click here), so I wanted to base my cookie around the jar of smooth, natural almond butter sitting in my cabinet, but I wanted to use a lot less sugar than the peanut-butter cookie recipe and I've always found brown sugar more appealing, so I used a bit of that. I like to smear my bananas in almond butter, so I threw in half of one, and from knowing the very basics of baking I knew I needed an egg and some baking soda in there. So, voila -- almond banana cookies are born. They're a not-too-sweet, easy to put together, guilt-free cookie with a cake-like texture. And boy, they went well with my coffee this morning (that one's for you, Dad).

Almond Banana Cookies (gluten-free, dairy-free, vegetarian)

1 cup of smooth, natural almond butter
1/4 cup of brown sugar (I'm sure agave nectar, or another sugar alternative would work well here)
1 egg, beaten
1/2 of banana, mashed
1 teaspoon baking soda
Dash of salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a bowl, combine all of the ingredients. Next, in heaping teaspoons -- drop the batter onto a cookie sheet, spacing each cookie an inch or so apart. Flatten the cookies a bit with the palm of your hand, or with the bottom of a glass. Bake for 8-10 minutes.

Makes fifteen cookies.