3-Ingredient Banana Cookies (Vegan)
By Carine Claudepierre
Published on 08/22/2020 - Last updated on 10/31/2023
This recipe may contain Amazon or other affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
These easy 3-ingredient banana cookies are soft, chewy, easy banana drop cookies, 100% vegan, refined sugar-free, and oil-free.
Bonus, these cookies made with banana are ready in less than 15 minutes, and they are perfect for a kid’s lunchbox.
A very healthy banana cookie recipe that doesn’t need butter and sugar, but only 3 simple, wholesome ingredients.
What Is The Best Banana Size For Baking?
The key to making the best banana cookies is first to select the perfect banana size.
These 3-ingredient banana cookies use a medium-sized banana, and it is important to weigh or measure your banana to check it’s the right size.
If your bananas are too small, the cookies will be very dry, and on the other side, a large banana will make the cookies wet and chewy.
Learn more about how to start your vegan journey with our beginner’s guide to the vegan diet!
Let’s see how to select the right banana size for cookie recipes. If the recipe calls for:
- A small banana: 6-inch to 7-inch long, with a weight of about 100 grams.
- A medium banana – between 7-inch and 8-inch long, with a weight of 118 grams. This is the most frequent banana size used in banana cookie recipes. It is the average size of most bananas and what we recommend using in banana cookie recipes.
- A large banana – between 8-inch and 9-inch long, with a weight of 136 grams.
- An extra-large banana – more than 9-inch long with a weight of 152 grams or more.
How Ripe Should My Bananas Be?
This banana cookie recipe uses fresh bananas. Since the cookie dough already contains an added sweetener, we don’t recommend using a ripe or very ripe banana to avoid an overly sweet cookie.
Below are some tips for selecting the perfect banana ripeness. It depends on the recipe, of course.
Some recipes like a banana bread recipe will call for a ripe banana. Use the ripening guide below to help you select bananas!
- Underripe – skin is yellow with green tips. These bananas won’t deliver flavor or sweetness in baking.
- Fresh banana – skin is entirely yellow. The flesh is firm. These bananas deliver flavor and light sweetness in banana smoothies. They are great for baking if the recipe already calls for a large amount of sugar or liquid sweetener.
- Ripe bananas – skin has lots of black-brown sport. The flesh is soft, and the banana has a strong banana flavor. This level of ripeness is the most popular in banana bread recipes.
- Very-ripe banana – skin has large black areas, and the flesh turns dark/brown. These bananas are very sweet, better baked, and not raw in a smoothie. Very ripe bananas deliver a strong banana flavor and sweetness, and they are great for banana bread recipes or banana cookies recipes that don’t use added sugar.
How To Make Easy Banana Cookies
This is an easy banana recipe with few ingredients. It’s made in under 25 minutes with just 3 pantry ingredients.
Ingredients
These are the easiest banana cookies you will ever make!
All you need are the 3 simple ingredients below:
- Banana – you don’t even need ripe bananas for this recipe. Fresh bananas work well. It is actually the best option, or this banana cookie recipe can be too sweet.
- Maple syrup or any liquid sweetener you love. If you are using ripe bananas, you can replace the maple syrup with unsweetened almond milk to make banana cookies with no sugar added. This is a great option to make baby banana cookies and introduce solid food to babies without adding sugar into the recipe. Note that the recipe won’t work with crystal sugar like brown sugar, coconut sugar, or white sugar. You must use a liquid sweetener to reach a good consistency.
- Flour – all-purpose flour or white spelt flour for healthy banana cookies. In fact, spelt is higher in fiber and nutrients and a healthier option to bake with. Unfortunately, you can’t use oat flour or almond flour in this recipe. The amount required will be way different, and it is a new recipe to create. This said, if you want a banana oatmeal cookie, try my other recipe, these banana breakfast cookies will be perfect for you.
Instructions
First, mash the banana on a flat surface like a chopping board or a plate using a fork. It is ok to keep some banana bites in the recipe.
Then, combine the mashed banana with maple syrup or unsweetened almond milk for kids’ finger food with no sugar added.
Finally, stir in the flour until you obtain a sticky batter, similar to a banana bread batter.
Shaping The Cookies
These are banana drop cookies. It means you are dropping dollops of cookie dough a the baking sheet.
Don’t try to shape or roll the dough into cookie dough balls. It is too wet and sticky to do so.
Then, place each dollop onto a cookie tray, covered with oiled parchment paper.
Press each cookie to flatten into a round shape if you like. The thicker, the chewier and softer they will be.
Baking Banana Cookies
Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C) before starting the recipe. Then bake for 12 minutes at 350°F (180°C) or until slightly golden on top.
These are vegan banana cookies which means they don’t use eggs or butter, and therefore their color is light and white.
Banana Bread Drop Add-ons
These are soft, chewy banana bread cookies. It means that they have all the flavors of banana bread with the chew of a soft cookie.
There are many ways to boost the flavors of this easy banana cookie recipe.
For example, you can add some of the ingredients below into the cookie dough to make it even more flavorsome:
- Dark chocolate chips – add 1/3 cup of chocolate chips, and use vegan chocolate chips to make vegan banana chocolate chip cookies.
- Chopped walnuts – add 1/3 cup finely chopped walnuts or pecan nuts.
- Baking soda – add 1/8 teaspoon baking soda or 1/4 teaspoon baking powder for a fluffier cookie.
- Spices – add 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon allspices, or nutmeg to boost the fall flavors of your cookies.
- Salt – add 1/4 teaspoon salt.
- Vanilla extract – add 1 teaspoon vanilla extract or vanilla essence.
More Vegan Banana Recipes
I have plenty of great recipes using a banana as the main ingredient. You may want to try the recipes below too!
Don’t forget to check all my Ripe Banana Recipes ideas for more ways to use those ripe bananas!
Made these 3-ingredient banana cookies? Share a picture with me in the comment section below or on Instagram.
Your friend, Carine
Did You Like This Recipe?
Leave a comment below or head to our Facebook page for tips, our Instagram page for inspiration, our Pinterest for saving recipes, and Flipboard to get all the new ones!
3-Ingredient Banana Cookies
Ingredients
- 2 medium Bananas - fresh (or ripe but the cookie will be much sweeter) 118 g, 4.2 oz each banana, unpeeled banana
- ⅓ cup Maple Syrup - or agave syrup or liquid syrup you like
- 1 cup Spelt Flour - or all-purpose flour
Adds on – optional but recommended
- ⅓ cup Vegan Dark Chocolate Chips
- ¼ teaspoon Baking Powder - for light and fluffy cookies
- ½ teaspoon Ground Cinnamon
- ¼ teaspoon Salt
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C). Line a baking tray with parchment paper, and lightly oil the paper with oil. Set aside.
- Before you start, make sure you are using a medium-size banana. A medium-sized banana weighs about 118g/4.2 oz unpeeled.
- In a medium-size mixing bowl, mash the banana into a puree. It is ok if there are a few lumps.
- Stir in maple syrup, then stir in flour until it forms a wet, sticky cookie dough, similar to banana bread dough.
- Scoop out dollops of cookie dough on the prepared tray, leaving 1 thumb space between each cookie. The cookie won't expand in the oven.
- Slightly spread the dough with the back of a spoon into a round cookie shape if desired.
- Bake 12 minutes or until slightly golden on the top.
- Store in the fridge in an airtight box for up to 3 days.
I know it’s not vegan, but could I use 1/4C of honey instead of maple syrup?
Yes, they are interchangeable.
This recipe had me Googling “is it safe to ingest parchment paper”. I was in a hurry and had a bit more banana than needed and forgot to toss in a bit more flour. Perhaps this is why the cookies became permanently and irreversibly adhered to the parchment. Next time I will use a greased sheet. Despite the trouble these are a pretty neat & easy way to use a banana
I made 1 1/2 dozen cookies with this recipe
I came across this recipe when I was in a baking mood but had next to no ingredients in the house! So this was a perfect find. The cookies are so quick and easy to make – great taste, too, though expect a chewy texture as they aren’t cookies in the crunchy sense – and now I feel like I’ve actually achieved something today 😀 Many thanks for posting the recipe!
I’m new to baking and this was very easy and delicious
They have potential but they were too chewy for my liking. Easy though to put together.
these are the best. perfect for baby led weaning too
Very tasty! I added the optional ingredients and used Bob’s Red Mill gluten free flour. Following the instructions, I weighed my bananas which was a good thing as the bananas I had selected were bigger than required. The end result was a chewy cookie (more of a bread mouth-feel than a regular cookie) with a mild banana flavor. Fast and easy to make!
The cookies are different in texture than a regular cookie. We did add the baking powder and sugar free chocolate chips. I would bake them again because they are so simple to make.
How long do they last in the freezer??
You can freeze any cookies up to 3 months in an airtight container then thaw the day before at room temperature. Enjoy!
I followed this recipe exactly, including all additional ingredients. I measured the bananas according to the instructions as well and was within a few grams of the recommended total. Where there were no explicit instructions I followed my own learned methods from baking regular cookies- mix salt, cinnamon and baking powder with flour in a separate bowl and mix into the wet ingredients until just combined, fold in chocolate chips afterwards, etc.).
The result was a dense, gummy mass. It wasn’t “bad”, just not at all how a cookie should feel in my opinion. It did brown and crisp fairly well on the bottom and a bit around the sides and top though. Maybe if I had flattened it out much more to about a cm in thickness it’d work better. Nonetheless, this experience has reassured me that bananas should not be the main ingredient in baked goods but rather a replacement for something like eggs.
So to hopefully save you some time, unless you enjoy gummy-textured sweets (no jugement if you do) or better understand methods used for preparing something like this, I’d skip this specific sort of recipe and go for something that includes the concept of a butter and sugar base (but with alternatives). That should introduce the crumbly and crunchy textures that cookies are known for.
Despite the turnout not being exactly what I had expected I am thankful for the experience and really appreciate this recipe being shared. I’ll definitely be trying out some variations of this idea in the future. Cheers!
I appreciate your integrity as a baker and a blogger to include negative reviews in the reviews.
This isn’t one of them. I made them for breakfast this morning but I used about an eighth of a cup of honey instead of maple syrup. I also used gluten-free flour. They’re delicious and came out great!
Pinned and will make again for a quick sweet!
These are soft, chewy banana cookies, the purpose is to create an easy cookie that kids can eat at any ages. If you prefer a crispy chewy banana cookie, you can try my classic banana cookie recipe, enjoy!
Thanks so much! How long will they last in the freezer?
You can freeze cookies up to 3 months in zip bags or airtight container. Enjoy!
Super easy and versatile recipe! More of a pancake texture than a cookie texture. Thanks for sharing.
How many cups of flour are required to do this banana cookies and also I’m using the ripe bananas. Am i still on the right track or i just lost it? I have only 3 bananas that want to use to make those cookies.
Scroll up in this post for the recipe measurements in the recipe card. Enjoy
Wonderful recipe! Thank you! I noticed the 3 days refrigeration, what about freezing?
Sure, you can freeze them in zip bags and thaw at room temp the day before serving. Enjoy!
Love!!!!!!! Super yummy, especially with cinnamon. If I wanted it more cake-like in consistency, how can that be achieved?
For a banana bread/cake texture use my other banana cookie recipe here. It has few more ingredients, but texture is what you are after! Enjoy! XOXO Carine
Are the insides supposed to be soft and almost squishy/doughy like? I thought the inside would be like the exterior, crunchy.
Yes, as mentioned in the recipe post it’s a soft chewy banana cookie. For crunchy banana cookie try this banana cookie recipe instead. Enjoy!
Hi would whole wheat flour work in this recipe?
I am pretty sure it will but since whole wheat contains more fiber the cookies will be dryer
Easy, guilt free and delicious! This is a winner! I made these gluten free by using oat flour instead of all purpose and they turned out great. I will definitely make these again!
I followed the directions but the cookies did not seem done after 12 minutes so I added 4 minutes. They slid off the sheets OK but after cooling were still more like a confection than a cookie. Any suggestions other than cooking longer.
It looks like your ratio of liquid to dry ingredients is off, probably too much mashed banana, make sure you measure this precisely before starting to avoid that. I hope it helps, Enjoy, XOXO Carine
Hi Carine, thank you for this recipe. Is it a must to keep the cookies in the fridge?
They store well at room temperature for few days too if it’s not too hot in your home. But for more than 3 days I prefer the fridge.
Such easy recipe to make. My daughter who has no patience, loved helping me make these cookies and said they were the best cookies she’s ever had. We added vegan chocolate chips and they turned out so good!
I am so happy to read this lovely message ! Thank you for trying my recipe with your little one. Take care, XOXO Carine
I made these today, like I make so many of these wonderful recipes and they are just so easy and quick to make! They are delicious too and it’s a great snack, guilt free and filled with goodness!
Thanks for the amazing review. I am glad you love them, XOXO Carine
Can i replace maple syrup with honey?
Sure, any liquid sweetener will work. Enjoy the cookie. XOXO Carine
How much almond milk and flour do you use
The recipe doesn’t use almond milk. The amount of flour is specified in the recipe card like the amount of banana and liquid sweetener. Enjoy the recipe, XOXO Carine
The article above the recipe card states “Note that if you are using ripe banana you can replace the maple syrup with unsweetened almond milk to make banana cookies with no sugar added.” So I can understand why the question was asked!
I meant you can replace the same amount of maple syrup by same amount of unsweetened almond milk for a no-added sugar recipe. Sorry if I was unclear. Take care and enjoy the recipe, XOXO Carine
Perfect for the health conscious swimmer in our house who is allergic to eggs! Will def. make these again. Thank you for the recipe.
Thank you so much for the lovely feedback! I am so happy you love them, XOXO Carine
This was a great recipe to make with my 23 month old. Simple, wholesome, and delicious. Plus versatile. We will definitely make these again.