Last week found me in the kitchen, staring down a pair of brown bananas. I am one of those people who prefers to eat bananas when they are on the green side. The best bananas are the ones with nary a brown speckle anywhere, and once they start to speckle, they must be eaten quickly, or no one will touch them. Two got away, and while the basic part of me had planned on making banana bread with them, I really was hoping to make something a little different. But not too different.
A google search for Banana Cookies took me straight to Elise of Simply Recipes and a recipe shared with her by Garrett of Vanilla Garlic fame. The number of comments below was promising, and the fact that this was an old tried and true with a history made it the perfect candidate for “something different with brown bananas.”
I followed the recipe as written, with one exception. I’ve been mostly dairy-free for a week now, and while one stick of butter wouldn’t have made that big of a difference, I knew I wanted more than just a taste of these cookies, so I used some Earth Balance Buttery Sticks instead. Oh, and I also reduced the amount of cloves called for. The cookies came together quickly, baked up quickly, and the end result tasted a lot like banana bread. These are definitely cakey cookies, and while I am not normally a fan, I’m coming around. I must be coming around, because I believe I ate most of these cookies by myself, they were terribly addicting. When I eat banana bread, my favorite part is the top crust, so I always eat that last, nibbling around the edges, and then the middle before the top layer. Crazy, I know, but these cookies? These cookies were like just lopping off the entire top layer of a whole loaf of banana bread and eating that. They were very good, and I’m sad that I didn’t put any in the freezer for another day.
Banana Cookies
- 1/2 cup of unsalted butter, room temperature
- 1 cup of sugar
- 1 egg, room temperature
- 1 cup of mashed bananas (about 2 ½ large bananas)
- 1 teaspoon of baking soda
- 2 cups of flour
- pinch of salt
- 1/2 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon of ground mace or nutmeg
- 1/2 teaspoon of ground cloves
- 1 cup of pecans (walnuts and chocolate chips are fine alternatives)
Method
1 Preheat the oven to 350°F. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add the egg and continue to beat until the mixture is light and fluffy.
2 In a bowl, mix the mashed bananas and baking soda. Let sit for 2 minutes. The baking soda will react with the acid in the bananas which in turn will give the cookies their lift and rise.
3 Mix the banana mixture into the butter mixture. Mix together the flour, salt, and spices and sift into the butter and banana mixture and mix until just combined.
4 Fold into the batter the pecans or chocolate chips if using. Drop in dollops onto parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Bake for 11-13 minutes or until nicely golden brown. Let cool on wire racks.
Makes about 30 cookies.