Third times a charm, right? I wish! Seriously, if I could bank on a recipe working the third time testing it, I would be a happy camper.
It’s not so much the cooking that is difficult; in fact, cooking is fun. You can tweak recipes as you go. It’s the baking. Oh the baking! If you are the slightest bit off in flour or sugar, your baked goods can fall flat or puff out of control. It’s a mess.
But kinda like your morning hair; once tamed, it can be beautiful.
One of my favorite late night snacks is a peanut butter and banana sandwich. I’m very picky with it. I like soft…dare I say…wheat bread, crunchy peanut butter and a perfectly ripe banana sliced lengthwise to fit the dimensions of the bread.
I told you I was picky. However, those sandwiches are of the past seeing as how we don’t have any wheat bread in the house. What to do, what to do? Cookies!
Doesn’t a peanut butter and banana chocolate chip cookie sound divine?!
Yeah, well it’s not. Sorry to burst your bubble just as mine was, but those flavors just don’t bake well into a cookie. Trust me, I tried four times. I pretty much gave up. There were just too many competing flavors. I’d rather keep my bananas in my banana bread.
Then came a shopping trip and an epiphany. Almond butter. Yes, almond butter. Almond butter doesn’t have as distinct of a flavor as peanut butter, but it is just as smooth and rich as its cousin.
And so the banana cookie recipe development pressed forward.
Luckily I had kept all my notes on my previous attempts and was quickly able to reconstruct yet another recipe that I thought would work. Hallelujah for the moment I pulled out the first batch of these Almond Butter Banana Chocolate Chip Cookies because they were glorious! Just perfect.
These cookies are not cakey at all like your typical banana cookie. They have the chewy texture that a regular chocolate chip cookie has with the hint of banana. It’s banana bread in a cookie!
And the almond butter does not compete at all in flavor, but only highlights the sweetness of the bananas and chocolate.
These are quick to become a family favorite.
Can you tell Emry likes them? I could hardly take enough pictures before her little hands were sneaking away cookies. What a little varmint she is.
And so another lesson learned in recipe development: if at first (or second, or third, or fourth) you don’t succeed…try, try again.
- 1¾ cups finely ground gluten free oat flour
- ½ cup plus 1 tablespoon potato starch (not flour)
- ½ cup plus 1 tablespoon tapioca starch
- ½ cup plus 1 tablespoon finely ground almond flour
- 2 teaspoon ground flaxseed meal
- 1½ teaspoons baking soda
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon xanthan gum
- ½ cup almond butter
- ½ cup shortening
- ½ cup mashed banana (about 1 medium)
- ½ cup sugar
- ½ cup light brown sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1¼ teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1½ cups (or more) semi sweet or milk chocolate chips*
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line cookie sheets with parchment paper. Set aside.
- In a small mixing bowl sift together oat flour, potato starch, tapioca starch, almond flour, flaxseed, baking soda, salt and xanthan gum.
- In a larger mixing bowl, cream together almond butter, shortening, sugar and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs and cream together. Mix in vanilla and mashed banana and beat until combined.
- Add dry ingredients to wet mixture. Mix until combined. Beat an additional minute. Stir in chocolate chips.
- Using a small cookie scoop, drop 1 inch balls of dough 2 inches apart on cookie sheet. Bake for 9-10 minutes, rotating after 7 minutes, until golden brown.
- Once removed from oven, immediately slide parchment paper off onto a wire rack with cookies to cool. Once cooled, using a spatula, remove cookies from parchment paper.
these look so yummy!
Thanks! It took me forever to figure out a banana cookie that wasn’t cakey. I love your DIY projects. I’ll be using some of your ideas soon!
These look wonderful! What kind of shortening do you use? Also, do you happen to know the weights, especially of the dry ingredients? I’d feel much more confident trying to replicate your recipe using grams or ounces.
Thanks! They’re one of our family’s favorite cookies. I use regular Crisco for my shortening. Unfortunately I don’t know weights. I need to get a kitchen scale. When I bake I make sure to lightly scoop the flours at room temperature and level them off with a knife. Hopefully that helps. =)