Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a Silpat mat.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

In a large skillet, melt 1 stick of butter over medium heat. Add the oatmeal and cook, stirring until toasted, about 5 minutes. Don’t skip this step. Toasting the oatmeal really adds a great nutty flavor and softens the oats perfectly for the cookies! Meanwhile, mash the bananas with a potato masher.

Mix remaining 2 sticks of softened butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar and beat on medium-high speed until fluffy. Add the peanut butter, bananas, and vanilla and beat until fluffy again. Add the salt and baking soda and beat until combined. Add the oatmeal and beat until incorporated. Add the flours one at a time and mix until just combined.

Using a large spoon, scoop the cookie dough into medium-sized balls and place onto the cookie sheet about an 1 1/2” apart. Bake for 10 minutes. Take cookies out of the oven, flatten with a fork, and place back into the oven for another 5 minutes. Remove from the oven, let cool on the cookie sheet for a few minutes, then move to a cooling rack to finish cooling.

Note: I wanted the healthful benefits of using whole wheat flour, so you’ll notice in the recipe, I pretty much used half whole wheat flour and half all-purpose flour. If you’re using whole wheat flour instead of all-purpose flour, you have to use a little bit more than you would all-purpose flour, because it’s finer. But the combination of the two worked great for these cookies. If you only have all-purpose flour, you can use about 2 1/4 cups in the recipe. Also, if you click on the related blog post linking to my website, you can find out how to cut the saturated fat in half for these cookies by using Earth Balance buttery sticks and Earth Balance peanut butter.

I hope you enjoy these cookies as much as I did! The recipe makes a lot of cookie dough (approximately 3 dozen cookies), so bake half and freeze half, and that way, when you’re craving something sweet, you can whip up a fresh batch of cookies in no time!