Baking: Oatmeal Banana Muffins and Cookies

So I know it seems like all I ever bake are things with oatmeal and bananas.  Looking back on my baking posts, I am starting to think that that's the case.

This picture is from a while back - when I made a modified oatmeal and banana muffin with yogurt instead of oil. 

I have recently grown bolder with modifying recipes (let's face it, I was never meant to be a baker.  I am terrible at following instructions in recipes).  There are cooks and there are bakers, and I fall solidly in the cook camp. 

Where is the fun, after all, if you just follow the recipe to a tee?  It is likely that attitude that foreshadowed many a baking fail at my hands...

The recipe I used  kind of made up this time as I went along was:

2½ cups old fashioned oats

½ cup avocado and ½ cup vegetable oil (in lieu of 1 cup plain low fat Greek yogurt)

2 eggs

½ cup brown sugar (reduced from the suggested ¾ cup)

1½ teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

 1 tablespoon flax seeds

2  ripe bananas (I estimated this as I was using a cup of frozen banana mush I happened to have on hand...it might have been more like 3 big bananas)

I try to use yogurt or applesauce instead of oil when cooking any kind of these baked goods, however, my yogurt had gone bad!  Being way too lazy to run out to buy more (that entails running up and down four very long flights of stairs, I'll have you know) I opted to use avocado as a substitute.  I did not want to use a full avocado because I figured the flavor would be too strong.  A good rule of thumb is to split the portion half and half, avocado with oil or some other mushy ingredient of your choice.

This recipe is really easy to make.  You just dump everything into a bowl.  It does not matter the order of the dry ingredients or the wet ingredients.  The recipe I was looking at did not call for flax seeds, however, I am newly inspired to slip flax seeds into anything I can.  They are innocuous and flavorless and supposed to be-oh-so-good-for-you, especially if you are *arhem* irregular.

Here, a nice half cup of gloopy green stuff.

 Are you scared yet?  Avocado in the baked goods!

Technically when you are done mixing all of the ingredients together, you are supposed to put it in a blender or food processor and blend it until everything is chopped thin and smooth.  Lacking either of those kitchen utensils, I opted to just make a chewier, more texturized cookie. 

When I ran out of silicone muffin cups, I plopped the batter down onto a cookie sheet and made cookies instead. 

 The end result was kind of like a mooffie  - the chewiness and heartiness of a muffin, in the shape of a cookie.  You can still see the tinge of green in these little monsters.