Green Monster Smoothie

I eat the same breakfast almost every day (2 pieces toast with peanut butter). In an effort to be more adventurous when it comes to the first meal of the day, I'm consciously making an effort to try some new things in the next month or two.  First up is this spinach-banana smoothie from Oh She Glows.

This smoothie was pretty good.  I usually have all the ingredients on hand (almond milk, banana, spinach, chia, almond or peanut butter) so this is a smoothie I could make regularly. 

A few notes:

• I used almond butter (instead of peanut butter)
• I skipped on adding protein powder

Banana Oat Cookies

Thanks to Colleen for directing me to this recipe. These cookies were tasty and moist, quick to prepare and I was happy to use up some frozen bananas in my freezer! I also liked that sweetness could be adjusted extremely easily.

A few notes

• Colleen suggested not to skimp out on the chocolate as that is really the only sweetener in these cookies (aside from the bananas and unsweetened coconut). I used about 1/2 cup dark chocolate chips (rather than 1/2 chocolate bar as per the original recipe) and thought this amount was adequate.
• I used 4 (instead of 3) bananas.  I think this made my batter wetter so I ended up baking the cookies for closer to 18 minutes
• I used a blend of large flake and quick oats
• It was unclear in the recipe how many cookies this recipe yielded. I made about 24 cookies that were about 2 inches in diameter.  These cookies don't flatten when baking so shape them on the baking sheet exactly how you want them
• I couldn't really taste the unsweetened shredded coconut so I might increase the amount when I make these again

Peanut Butter & Banana Muffins with Chocolate Frosting

I always seem to have bananas in my freezer waiting to be used.  This recipe is from 

Gluten Free Vegan Girl.  One thing that drew me to this recipe was that there was no added sugar!

A few notes:

• I didn't read the recipe properly and made 12 muffins instead of 6.  I baked my muffins at 375F for about 20 min.
• I didn't use muffin cups but rather sprayed my muffin tin with vegetable spray
• I added about 5 chocolate chips to the centre of the muffins instead of the chocolate square
• I used natural peanut butter
• When I was preparing the icing, I almost forgot to remove the pits from the dates, glad I checked!

I liked these muffins.  The peanut butter flavour was very subtle. They certainly were not sweet so I added the icing to all of them. I really liked the icing using the dates. The date flavour was definitely there but wasn't overpowering.  I would definitely use this icing again.