Directions
Recently, we moved into a brand new house. I love my house from top to bottom, but one of the things that bothered me a bit was that the house smelled sterile. It didn’t smell like us. The walls hadn’t soaked in hours of cooking, and living and greasy kid fingerprints. It just smelled like…new construction. That’s not all bad. I mean, there are much worse things to smell like than clean, new house, but I realized it was going to take a while to make the house smell like home.
I figured one of the first things I needed to do to break my house in was to bake some cookies. We’d unpacked, what seemed like, millions of boxes and successfully transported our family (and one neurotic dog) to a new state, so we deserved a treat, right? Plus, nothing makes a house seem homier than the smell of fresh baked cookies.
I wanted to try something new, so I unearthed an old cookie cookbook that I’d long forgotten. Sometimes, unpacking a house is a good thing because you run across old friends! This cookbook is filled with delicious, different, cookie recipes, but when I saw the recipe for Double Chocolate Banana Cookies, I knew I had to give it a go.
One of my favorite summer treats is a frozen banana, dipped in chocolate and rolled in almonds. This was that…in a cookie! It seemed too good to be true. Thankfully, it wasn’t.
I started by pureeing four bananas in my blender.
Once they were sufficiently baby fooded up, I mixed up my batter. The usual suspects, flour, sugar, baking soda, melted margarine, and eggs were involved. I also added some rich cocoa powder and the bananas. Once that was stirred up, I tossed in a bag of chocolate chips and a heap of toasted chopped almonds.
This recipe makes a lot of batter, so break out the big bowl!
The batter was very soft at this point and needed to be chilled for at least an hour before I could scoop it out. If I didn’t chill it, the batter would have run all over the place on the baking sheet. So, into the fridge it went for a rest.
When I was ready to bake, I scooped out large scoops, probably about 1/4 cup each, onto my baking sheet.
In between batches, I put the batter back into the fridge. I didn’t want to risk any crazy run-off cookie situations.
The cookies baked for about fifteen minutes. As they baked, my new sterile house filled with that homey aroma of fresh baked banana bread, studded with some chocolate for good measure. It was exactly what I was going for.
When the cookies came out of the oven, they were like sweet little pillows. They bake up more like a muffin top than a traditional cookie. They were packed with amazing flavor. Flavor that, up until then, I’d never actually had in a cookie. They were also chock full of crunchy toasted almonds and oatmeal, which made me feel like they were (almost) good for me.
And, as an added bonus, my new house smelled like home.
DOUBLE CHOCOLATE BANANA COOKIES
Adapted from 101 Cookie Recipes: A Collection of Your Favorites
- 3-4 extra ripe bananas, peeled
- 2 cups rolled oats
- 2 cups sugar
- 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1 tsp. baking soda
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 2 eggs, slightly beaten
- 1 1/4 cups margarine, melted
- 1 cup natural almonds, toasted and chopped
- 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
- Puree the bananas in a blender. It should amount to about 2 cups of liquid for the recipe.
- Combine the oats, sugar, flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt in a large bowl until well mixed. Stir in the bananas, eggs and melted margarine until blended. Stir in the almonds and chocolate chips.
- Chill the batter for at least 1 hour or until the batter becomes partially firm. (The batter will run during baking if too soft.)
- Preheat your oven to 350*F.
- Line your cookie sheets with parchment paper, and scoop out 1/4 cup sized scoops of the chilled batter out onto your baking sheets.
- Bake for 15-17 minutes, or until cookies are puffed and set in the middle. Remove to a wire rack to cool.
- They keep for up to a week in an airtight container.
- ENJOY!
