5-ingredient vegan banana cookies

Yes, more cookies on Five for a Fiver! This week I made 5-ingredient vegan banana cookies which took only about 15 minutes from prep to bake. These vegan banana cookies are probably one of the easiest recipes to bring out of the bag, especially when you only have random ingredients left in the cupboard and you need to come up with something fast to curb your appetite – or your sugar cravings – between meals.

Cookie recipes are pretty straightforward. For a basic cookie dough, you need sugar, butter and flour and then you can add whichever optional ingredients you want. 

However, I’m sure you’ve noticed that I don’t really follow standard recipes here on Five for a Fiver, so, naturally, for these 5-ingredient vegan Banana cookies, I used other ingredients, like flaxseed, maple syrup, and cashew butter. 

I stepped outside of the norm (I normally make peanut butter or buy from the shop) and made some cashew butter from soaked raw cashew nuts, which turned out ok… I didn’t leave the cashews to blend for long enough so they ended up rather grainy. I was more interested in the slightly sweet taste of cashew nuts anyway and I think the nut alternative worked really well, especially with the banana. Here are the ingredients:

Which ended up looking like these scrumptious 5-ingredient vegan banana cookies! 

Quick cooking lesson – baking soda? baking powder? self-raising flour? plain flour? Which do I use!?

So, what’s the deal with baking soda in desserts? And, what’s the difference between baking soda and baking powder? And, when do you use plain flour and self-raising flour?

Well, here is the deal: 

Baking soda (otherwise known as bicarbonate of soda) and baking powder are both leavening agents, meaning they will cause bubbles in the batter which then expands as it cooks and the batter ends up rising. However, baking soda is a pure leavening agent, so it needs to be mixed with acids like chocolate, honey, lemon juice, yoghurt, vinegar and buttermilk. The mixture will then cause carbon dioxide in the form of bubbles, which is called “chemical leavening”. The trapped carbon dioxide gas makes the dough and batter rise.

Baking powder causes a reaction pretty much straight away and in baking, you don’t always want the rising to happen at the same time.

Self-raising flour contains baking powder and sometimes salt. But plain flour requires that you add your raising agents in separately to make sure that the batter rises. If a recipe calls for self-raising flour, then you can’t change it to plain flour and vice versa. Use the flour recommended in the recipe, along with baking powder or baking soda, if the recipe calls for it.

If you only have plain flour then you can make your own self-raising flour by adding half a teaspoon of baking powder for every 100g of plain flour.

So, cooking lesson over! Let’s get onto the recipe!

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Please find below a list of ingredients for this recipe that I found from Tesco for £4.85 total (prices may vary from 14 October 2018)

Clarks Original Maple Syrup, 180ml – £1.50

Tesco Eat Me Bananas, 5 – 90p

Tesco Flax Seeds, 150g – £1.50

Tesco Cashew Nuts, 25g – 50p

Stockwell & Co Plain Flour, 1.5kg – 45p

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