Banana Oat Biscuits

Claudia Harley, the creator of Wellfulness, shares her tips on using cooking as a mindfulness activity with kids, as well as one of her favourite recipes – banana oat biscuits.

Mindfulness for me is a good practical way to deal and mitigate anxiety.

I try to use any opportunity to practice it and I do it in almost everything I do. It helps me to keep myself grounded in the present moment, becoming aware of my thoughts and emotions and letting them flow without judgement.

Mindfulness for kids

I wish I knew the techniques sooner,  it would’ve helped me a lot growing up, but I’m grateful that at one point in my life I found them and now I can pass on those skills to my son.

At 2 years old, he’s too young to understand the concept of thoughts and emotions, but one of my goals as his mum, aside from keeping him alive, is to equip him with skills for the future and help him become a resilient adult.

I’ve read a few techniques to teach kids mindfulness such as tuning into your Spidy (as in Spiderman) senses or the “belly breathe” which are great for older kids, but he’s still young, so I figured that we can cook together and use the opportunity to tune into our senses to bring awareness to the present moment.

Cooking as a mindfulness activity

Tuning into our senses: Touch, See, Smell, Hear, Taste

We tune into our senses while we start mixing all the ingredients together, starting with the dry ingredients following by the wet ones, we use our hands to combine them together.

The recipe I make with my son is an adaptation of my favourite oatmeal biscuit. It has kid-friendly and healthy ingredients; it doesn’t have flour, dairy (so I can eat it) or added sugar. You can use honey as an optional sweetener.

Bonus point: We bond, we have fun together with the added sensory stimulation while making a yummy healthy treat that he actually eats because he cooked it. Win!

Banana Oat Biscuits

Ingredients:

2 cups of oats

3 medium bananas, mashed

2/3 cup almond meal

1/3 cup shredded coconut

¼ cup olive oil

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

chocolate chips / raisins (optional)

Method

Preheat oven to 180°C.

Mix all ingredients together, first the oats, almond meal, shredded coconut and then the olive oil, the bananas and the vanilla extract and finish with the chocolate chips or raisins if you choose to add them.

Roll a spoonful of dough into a small ball and place on an oven-ready tray with baking paper, try to leave a bit of space between them and bake for approx. 15 min. depending on your oven, until they are golden brown.

Claudia Harley is the owner of Wellfulness, a holistic health directory that connects busy and career driven women with products and services to nourish their mind, body and environment. To find out more visit Wellfulness here.

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