Banana oat cookies

The last ten days have been rather stressful here, hence my blogging has suffered. I didn't have any enthusiasm to write, even when I had spare time. It started with a phone call from school, as I was sitting in a cafe with an old friend, A. She is actually a friend of one of my dearest friends who sadly passed away three years ago. I haven't seen A since the funeral, as she lives in Sweden. She was visiting Oxford and we arranged to meet. I hardly ever go to Oxford these days, and you can always find me at home during the day time. By Sod's law, the only time I go out to meet a friend outside town, the incident happened.
My darling Eddie managed to knock out his front tooth at school. They called me, I jumped on the taxi, and unfortunately due to road works we were stuck in the traffic, with me frantically trying to call a friend in town to ask her if she could take Eddie to the dentist asap. I wish the school didn't wait for me and took him to the dentist who's based literally across the square.
By the time we got there, and the tooth was put back in (without any anesthetic), it was already an hour and a half since the incident happened. The dentist told me that if the tooth was put back in during the first five minutes, the tooth would have had the best chance. In the first hour - 50/50. After an hour, the best we can hope is for the tooth to stay for several years.
So, now my poor chap will have years of dental work and possibly implants etc ahead.
I nearly fainted when they were putting his tooth back in. My little boy was so pale, he was clearly in shock. I had to sit on the floor, as my head was spinning.

He was a real trooper when they were putting the tooth in, and later stitching the gum and placing a big staple across four front teeth with blobs of paste over it to hold it in place.
He's not been eating well, as the brace/staple bothers him. He also needed antibiotics for five days.

On top of that, Sasha had a bad cold, then it was my turn to be poorly, and yesterday Eddie woke up with high temperature as well. Arrrggghhh.

I haven't been baking much these days, except for a batch of banana oat cookies.
I had one miserable-looking banana in a fruit bowl, getting softer and darker. Not enough for a cake or banana bread, so I decided to try it as a partial substitute for sugar and margarine I use in choc chip oat cookies. It worked really well.

Banana oat cookies
Ingredients:
1 banana (about 100g weight, peeled)
50g caster sugar
50g margarine
70g oats with nuts and cranberries
180g self-raising flour
1 small egg
50g milk chocolate, chopped

In a big mixing bowl mash a banana with a fork, add the sugar and margarine and mix well. Add oats, flour, beat in egg and mix in chopped chocolate. Dip hands into flour and then pinch walnut-sized pieces of cookie dough, roll and flatten them slightly, and place them on a parchment paper in a baking tray.
Bake for about 12 minutes at 180C.
They will be still very soft, when you take the tray out. Transfer them carefully on a cooling rack.
Eat warm or cold. They are lovely.

In this recipe I used some of the American Road Trip muesli from Dorset Cereals which is basically oats with dried cranberries, almonds and orange zest. If you don't have this brand of muesli, any porridge oats would do, with dried berries, nuts or plain.

As I've made a good use of old-ish oats and an over-ripe banana, I'm adding this recipe to #KitchenClearout linky on Cheryl's Madhouse Family Reviews blog.