Banana Oatmeal Cookie

This time it wasn't my fault. I stopped buying bananas because they always get mushy and then I'm forced to use them for baking and I've learned my lesson. This time, I had mushy bananas because my in-laws brought them over one day and left them behind. Then, to no one's surprise, they got mushy and I had to find something to do with them.

I found this recipe on There's always thyme to cook. I really liked these cookies. They weren't overly sweet and I felt (sorta) healthy eating them since they had bananas and oatmeal. I did mess with the recipe a bit because I had 4 rotting bananas, not 3, but it still turned out fine, which is surprising because if you've followed my blog at all, you know that I suck at baking. Oh, I also kept them in the oven much longer than 12 minutes the original recipe called for because they weren't browning and came out mushy. With or without my tweaks, they were yummy and I definitely approve of this recipe.


Adapted from There's always thyme to cook
Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup white sugar
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 1 cup butter, softened
- 2 eggs
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 4 ripe bananas (the original recipe calls for 3, so 3 would probably work too)
- 2 cups rolled oats
- 1 cup chocolate chips
- 1 cup walnuts

Directions:
- Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
- Cream the butter, sugar and brown sugar together.
- Beat in the eggs and vanilla.
- Mix in the flour, baking soda, and cinnamon until well-combined.
- Mix in the banana, oats, walnuts and chocolate chips.
- Put spoonfuls of dough on a greased baking pan, parchment paper or silpat and bake for 12-15 minutes or until the cookies are just beginning to brown. (The original recipe says 10-12 minutes, but I found that it wasn't enough)
- Cool on a cooling rack and then share them with your friends!

Banana Nut Biscotti

I keep doing this. I keep buying bananas, and I keep letting them get mushy. Then I keep finding myself scrambling to find a recipe to use them up. So far, I've done banana bread, banana and chocolate chip cookies, and peanut butter banana cookies, along with an assortment of smoothies and peanut butter banana sandwiches. Another idea I had was to replace some of the oil in brownies (out of the box) with bananas. You could definitely taste a hint of banana in them, but banana and chocolate go together nicely, so it's a pretty good option if you ever find yourself in the same situation (or just want to make yourself feel less guilty about eating brownies).

So here I am, searching for a new banana idea and I found banana nut biscotti. And I've gotta say, I really like this one and might make it again in the future since I'm pretty sure I still haven't learned my lesson about not letting bananas get mushy on my watch.

I like these because they make a great snack, aren't too sweet (I'm mostly a salty kinda gal), and are relatively healthy. I even replaced some of the all-purpose flour with whole wheat and didn't even notice. Maybe next time I'll sub a bit more to see how much I can get away with before noticing.

Anyway, if you ever find yourself in a mushy banana predicament, I highly recommend giving this one a try.

I found this recipe on Culinary Adventures of a New Wife who got the recipe from Cooking Light. That makes this recipe a perfect candidate for the weekly Bookmarked Recipes event which was created by Ruth's Kitchen Experiment. Check out the roundup every Monday!







from Cooking Light

Ingredients:
- 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/3 cup mashed very ripe banana (about 1 banana)
- 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 large egg
- 1/3 cup chopped pecans, toasted
- Cooking spray

Directions:
- Preheat oven to 350°.
- Lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups, and level with a knife.
- Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.
- Combine banana, oil, vanilla, and egg in a medium bowl; stir in flour mixture and pecans (dough will be sticky).
- Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface; shape dough into 2 (8-inch-long) rolls with floured hands.
- Place rolls on a baking sheet coated with cooking spray; flatten to 1/2-inch thickness.Bake at 350° for 23 minutes.
- Remove rolls from baking sheet; cool 10 minutes on a wire rack.
- Cut each roll diagonally into 12 (1/2-inch) slices.
- Place slices, cut sides down, on baking sheet. Reduce oven temperature to 250°; bake 15 minutes.
- Turn cookies over; bake an additional 15 minutes (cookies will be slightly soft in center but will harden as they cool).
- Remove from baking sheet; cool completely on wire racks.

Peanut Butter Banana Cookies

Warning, this recipe makes a TON of cookies. But the good news is that they're yummy, so it probably won't be a problem.

I don't bake often because I'm not very good at it, especially when it comes to cookies, plus we don't really eat sweets in this house anyway. So what inspired the making of these cookies? Well, I had been craving peanut butter cookies for a while and I had 3 bananas that were going to go bad soon. Peanut butter and banana is always a great combo, so I googled away and found this! And because I really only wanted one or two cookies, not an entire batch, I decided to serve them at Thanksgiving!

I baked them a few days ahead of time with the help of my husband and brother-in-law, and I have them to thank for them turning out so well. The first batch that I did on my own were not so wonderful (I told you I can't bake). Even though the recipe says to bake them for 13-16 minutes and that they should not be brown on the edges and will set up as they cool, they never set up and were quite mushy. With the help of the hubz and his brother, we found that they had to be baked for ~20 minutes and have slightly browned edges for best results.

And look, I put them on a nice serving tray decorated with fall leaves and some fragrant rosemary for a pretty presentation =)

Adapted from Foodgeeks

• 3/4 cup margarine, softened
• 1-1/4 cups peanut butter
  
• 1 cup sugar
  
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 3 md. overripe bananas
  
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
  
• 2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1/8 tsp. baking powder

Directions:

• Preheat Oven to 325°F.
  
• In a large mixing bowl, cream together the margarine, peanut butter, sugar, and brown sugar until smooth.
  
• Peal the bananas and drop into the mixture; mix well (some small banana chunks are okay).
  
• Beat in eggs one at a time, mixing well after each.
  
• Combine the flour, baking soda, and baking powder; stir into the peanut butter mixture.
  
• Use a cookie scoop or drop by the spoonful onto ungreased cookie sheets.
• Bake for 13 to 16 minutes - they will not be golden brown when removed from oven. As they set they will turn slightly firm.
  
• Allow to cool on cookie sheet for two to three minutes before moving to a wire rack to cool completely.*

*Gaga's note: Like I mentioned above, I found that they actually needed closer to 20 minutes in the oven and needed to have slightly browned edges before being removed from the oven in order to set up properly. You may have to experiment a bit to see how your oven behaves.

Banana Bread

Can you believe I made this in my toaster oven? The little loaf pan looked so small and lonely in the big full-sized oven that it decided to try to use the toaster oven - and it fit! However, I don't know if it's the recipe of the toaster oven or some other problem of my own (I'm not exactly the best baker out there after all), but the bottom was on the verge of burning and the banana bread was a bit on the dry side. So I cannot recommend this recipe, nor can I recommend baking banana bread in the toaster oven, but I also don't NOT recommend them. =P

At least it looks good, right?

I used a recipe from Joy of Baking in case you want to give it a try. Hopefully yours will turn out better than mine!

Ingredients:

1 cup (115 grams) walnuts or pecans, toasted and coarsely chopped (optional)

1 3/4 cups (245 grams) all-purpose flour

3/4 cup (150 grams) granulated white sugar

1 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

2 large eggs, lightly beaten

1/2 cup (113 grams) unsalted butter, melted and cooled

3 ripe large bananas (approximately 1 pound or 454 grams), mashed well (about 1-1/2 cups)

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Method:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C) and place oven rack to middle position. Butter and flour (or spray with a non stick vegetable/flour spray) the bottom and sides of a 9 x 5 x 3 inch (23 x 13 x 8 cm) loaf pan. Set aside.

Place the nuts on a baking sheet and bake for about 8 to 10 minutes or until lightly toasted. Let cool and then chop coarsely.

In a large bowl combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nuts. Set aside.

In a medium-sized bowl combine the mashed bananas, eggs, melted butter, and vanilla. With a rubber spatula or wooden spoon, lightly fold the wet ingredients (banana mixture) into the dry ingredients just until combined and the batter is thick and chunky. (The important thing is not to over mix the batter. You do not want it smooth. Over mixing the batter will yield tough, rubbery bread.) Scrape batter into prepared pan and place the slices of banana on top of the batter for garnish. Bake until bread is golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 55 to 60 minutes. Place on a wire rack to cool and then remove the bread from the pan. Serve warm or at room temperature. This bread can be frozen.

Makes 1 - 9 x 5 x 3 inch loaf.

Banana and Chocolate Chip Cookies

Costco strikes again! We have a ginormous bag (25 whole pounds!) of flour from Costco and we're going through it surprisingly fast. I guess knowing that I have a ton of flour encourages me to bake more. I'll slowly post all the goodies that we've been making in this house as I get them written up (but I tend to be super slow about it - so I apologize in advance).

Baking still makes a bigger mess than I'd like it to, but I gotta say, it's not nearly as scary or hard as I once thought it was. The key is to follow the directions. You can't get away with eyeballing measurements, flavoring stuff "to taste", adding little extra somethings, or making substitions for things you don't have on hand or find icky like you can in cooking. Having a stand mixer definitely helps to. And I'm also getting better about cleaning up after myself as I bake like I do with cooking. Yay for me!

Now on to what I made with this big bag of flour - banana and chocolate chip cookies! I really like the combo of bananas and chocolate, so I thought this would be a great little treat to make and to use up some of the mushy bananas, plus I wanted to try an alternative use for mushy bananas besides smoothies and banana bread. It turned out pretty good for the most part. Some things to keep in mind if you want to try this are that the texture was more like a cake than a cookie as you can see below.

Another important thing is that usually with cookies you take them out before they look done and they'll firm up as they cool. With these, don't do that. My first batch was undercooked and was super mushy, and even putting them back in the oven didn't really help. It was kind of like all the banana floated to the top of the cookie and created a sticky, mushy layer on top that just wouldn't go away no matter how long I re-baked it for. I baked my second batch longer and they turned out much better (they still have the consistency of cake though).

Anyway, if you're interested in trying it, I got the recipe from Simply Recipes

Ingredients

• 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.