Oh how predictable, Christine makes another recipe with her new go-to ingredient PB2.What is not so predictable is the fact that I have posted for the past four days in a row! I have been trying so hard after my hiatus before and during Spring Break. I even worked on changing my background theme design. How do you guys like the new blog theme?

Now back to the recipe; I started off trying to make a peanut butter cookie without flour, hence using the banana. I wanted to cut down the calories in this sweet dessert, so I tried using my PB2 in place of regular or reduced fat peanut butter. However, I still haven’t mastered the PB2 to water ratio. Even though it says one part PB2 for one part water, I still think the water part is a little less. For this reason, these cookies quickly got a little too runny and I was running out of PB2 to add. Now I didn’t want to waste this perfectly good batter, even though it was a little too thin for cookies. This is where the bars came into play. Instead of putting the batter into little balls to make cookies, I took my smallest brownie sheet pan and poured the batter in. I cooked it for about 15 minutes and a thin little bar came out!

I would definitely recommend either doubling the recipe or adding a little more peanut butter to get a thicker bar or a regular cookie. Either way, I thought I would still share this recipe because in two days I literally ate the entire pan! Couldn’t have been that bad right? Even better was the fact that each of these bars were less than 40 calories and so soft! I didn’t feel any sense of guilt eating 5 in one day When I head back to school you can be assured I will make these again, trying to perfect the perfect PB2 cookie!

Ingredients

Banana: 1 medium

PB2: 8 tablespoons

Sugar: 1/4 cup

Stevia: 2 packet

Egg: 1/2

Pure Vanilla Extract: 1 teaspoon

Light Brown Sugar: 1 teaspoon

Oatmeal: 1/4 cup

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees and get ready for a new take on banana bread. I started off mixing up my PB2 and then adding the other ingredients  I ended up adding a little bit of oatmeal to resist using flour and to help thicken the mixture. It did help get me to a nice batter for bars, but still no cookie. Like I said, if you doubled a few of your ingredients and used a little less water I bet you could get a cookie or even a thicker bar. I was just experimenting, so below is what my batter looked like before baking.

After about 15 minutes in the oven, I got a thin banana bread bar! The kitchen started smelling delicious and I had to resist eating them before I let them cool. They needed to cool for about five minutes, so they would be easier to cut. 

I love cutting my desserts in small pieces, so I feel like I get to eat more. If I can eat two small bars instead of one larger bar, my mind is confused and I am one happy girl. I got 15 bars out of my recipe, but let me tell you these were very small, most people would probably get 10 normal size square bars.

Now I am the first to admit this isn’t the perfect bar to take to a party, although I don’t think your guests would be able to resist. I would make these for your family first, or if you are me, all for yourself!! I will post in the near future a perfect cookie which anyone would be jumping over.

For now, hopefully you enjoy these PB Banana Bread Bars as much as I did when I needed a sweet fix. Eating a few of these didn’t knock me off of my healthy eating, but did give me the sweet that I craved. They are so moist and didn’t get crunchy or dry at all which I loved. Let me know if any of you have good ideas on how to thicken this recipe without using flour for the next time!