Before you automatically dismiss these as unsatisfying, gross cookie-pucks that wouldn’t be appetizing to anyone normal, open your mind and read me out. Owen seems to be having trouble with white sugar lately (a wee bit of an understatement), so we’ve got the kid detoxing. We actually don’t eat white sugar in our house, but the birthday parties and end of the school year celebrations have gotten the better of us.

We were headed to yet another party, and Owen needed a treat and I wanted to try a new recipe. There aren’t a whole lot of sugar-free cookie recipes out there that are also healthy (honey doesn’t count as sugar-free — it digests like a white sugar — and artificial sweeteners aren’t actually edible).

So how good does the combination of peanut butter, oatmeal and banana sound? Yeah, it wasn’t good enough for me, either, so I switched a few ingredients, added grain-sweetened chocolate chips and created a cookie masterpiece. These are truly the most delicious sugar-free cookies I’ve made.

I gave this cookie recipe a test drive, but there were a number of things that didn’t work for me: the cookie sheets really need to be greased was the biggest thing. Here’s what I ended up with:

Sugar-free Almond Butter, Oatmeal and Banana Cookies

Ingredients:

• 1/3 cup almond butter (little guy’s allergic to peanuts)
• 2 ripe bananas
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 tablespoons unsweetened vanilla almond milk
• 2 tablespoons maple syrup (grade B has more nutrients)
• 2 1/2 cups rolled oats (you can grind some of these int he food processor if you don’t want the cookies to be too chunky)
• dash cinnamon
• 1/4 cup flour (I used sprouted spelt)
• 3/4 cup grain-sweetened chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and lightly grease cookie sheets.

Use a mixer to beat the bananas, almond butter, almond milk, vanila and maple syrup until smooth. Add the remaining ingredients and stir until well combined.

Drop by tablespoons onto greased cookie sheet and flatten slightly with a fork. Bake for 13-16 minutes or untl golden brown on the bottoms.

Yes, they’re sugar-free, vegan and healthy. But don’t hold that against them.

UPDATE: It’s really a wonder that the four-year-old doesn’t have his own column on CliqueClack Food yet. Today he told me that he’d really like the cookies I made for him last time (these) but with coconut in them. Now why didn’t I think of that? So I replaced 3/4 cup of the oats with unsweetened coconut and they reached a whole new level of delicious … that kid is awesome!