Modification Mondays: Chocolate Chip Banana Cookies

You know when you start with one recipe and then end up with something totally different? Or start with a vision in your head they you can’t find a recipe for, so you find 3 or 4 recipes that are sort of similar and awkwardly mash them together, with a bit of your own flare? Or have to adapt well-loved favorites to new dietary restrictions? Or look at old stand-bys and think: “This should totally have bacon. Or tomatoes. Or bourbon.”? Yeah, the Modification Mondays series is for you. Don’t worry, we don’t expect you to follow our recipes either. This is the first post in the series.

Greetings, fellow eaters, creators, and lovers of food. For this, my first post here, I will be sharing my all-time favorite classic chocolate chip cookie recipe, plus a new (and healthy?!) twist. [ETA: Two twists! Read to the end!]

Behold, the recipe:

This, dear friends, was clipped out of some forgotten newspaper or magazine by my mother before I was even born. This piece of paper was printed when the Berlin Wall was still a thing. It also contains what I am convinced is the greatest chocolate chip cookie recipe known to man.

(It should be noted, however, that it also makes the largest chocolate chip cookie recipe known to man. I always halve it and still end up giving cookies away.)


Anyway, I got married over the summer, and I took some of that sweet, sweet gift card money and got me a mixer. This mixer, to be exact:

That's right, a Kitchenaid stand mixer, the OG of stand mixers, in apple green. The best color.

So I've been baking rather a lot recently. And of course, a good part of that baking has been these cookies. And then last week, I was struck by inspiration: you could totally put some banana in these mofos and I bet it would be amazing.

Turns out, I was right.

So now, I have come to share the wonder with you! (Note: You could probably make this recipe, or at least a decent approximation of it, without an electric mixer, but it will make your arm tired. For creaming the butter, sugar, etc, without a mixer, I recommend fully melting the butter first and stirring it really well. And God help you.)

First off, get your workspace set up with the proper auditory stimulation. For this recipe, I recommend Neil Diamond.

Now, get pumped up by singing along to "America" while mashing some bananas.

What I did for this recipe was replace 3/4 of the butter with mashed bananas. So if we're halving the recipe (which we are, unless you want to drown in cookies), you'll need 3/4 cup of mashed bananas, which is about 1 1/2 to 2 medium bananas, more or less.


If you want to mash the bananas in your mixer, go right ahead. It's much easier. Just pour them into a cup when you think you've got the right amount and make sure. If you end up with a bit too much, just eat it. Babies know where it's at with the mashed fruit — that's tasty stuff.

Now add in 1/4 cup of butter. If it's not at room temperature already, soften it in the microwave, but don't melt it all the way (unless you're one of the brave, mixerless souls).

Cut it into pieces before you add it for maximum creamability, like so:

Now add in the sugars, 1 cup of each:

And next, throw in two eggs and a tsp. of vanilla.

Protip: My grandma told me this one. Crack your eggs into a separate bowl, and then dump them into the batter. That way, if you get a bit of eggshell in with the eggs, it's much easier to see and fish out. Trust me, you don't want bits of eggshell in your cookies.

Anyway, let your mixer run on low-medium speed a few minutes to let those cream together. Meanwhile, get working on that oatmeal.

This is the step my mom always let me help with as a kid, probably because it's kind of tedious and she was perfectly willing to take a break, but it's absolutely necessary, so don't cut corners here.

See on the original recipe where it says "put small amount at a time in blender until it turns to powder"? That's the key. If you don't do that, or if you rush it and half of it's not powdered, the texture will be all wrong; the batter will be too runny and there will be chewy bits of oatmeal in the cookies and it will be awful. Trust me.
What you need to do (and, I promise, it's not actually that hard) is take the oats, 1/4 cup at a time, stick 'em in the blender, and blend or chop or puree or whatever the hell you want until they're not recognizable as oats anymore. It's not an exact science; I can't tell you "use the puree setting for exactly 20 seconds" because I don't know. Just blend that shit until it turns into powder. It helps if you yell along to "Sweet Caroline" to try and drown out the combined noise of the blender and mixer.

Kindly ignore the gnarly burn on top of my hand.

Resist temptation and don't put more than 1/4 cup at a time in the blender or you'll get pockets that don't get properly pulverized.
Once each 1/4 cup is powderized, pour it out into a medium-sized mixing bowl and do the next 1/4 cup. Once you've got all the oats in, add 2 cups of flour to the bowl, plus the salt (1/2 tsp), baking powder (1 tsp), and baking soda (1 tsp):

If all this takes longer than about five minutes (and it probably will, at least until you get real quick with that blender), go ahead and turn off the mixer. No need to overdo it with the creaming.

Anyway, once you've got the dry stuff stirred together, turn the mixer back on and sing "Cracklin' Rosie" while you gradually add the dry ingredients to the mixer bowl until you've got a thick, delicious-looking cookie dough thing going on in there.

Now try (and fail) to get a decent action shot of you pouring in the chocolate chips while mixing them in.

Console yourself with the fact this this is looking amazing. Feel free to sample liberally.

I rarely use the rest of the add-ins from the original recipe, mostly because I think that many chocolate chips is enough chocolate, and I never have chopped nuts on hand. I have used walnuts in the past, though, and they are tasty.

Okay, we're done with the mixing, so I trust you know what to do with this:

If not, the Rolling Stones will kindly give you a hint:

Oh, yeah.

At this point, remember that the oven is supposed to be pre-heating already and quickly turn it to 375°F.

Now make sure your hands are thoroughly clean, free of rings and watches, and well-buttered. Do not skip the butter. You will be sorry. Hum along to "And the Grass Won't Pay No Mind" and uncomfortably contemplate the fact that your parents probably got laid to this music while making the dough into golf ball-sized blobs on a well-greased cookie sheet. (If you're doing the plain, non-banana recipe, you can skip greasing the sheet, but the banana version needs it.)

Now stick those suckers in the oven and lick off the dough that is sticking to your fingers in spite of the butter. Sing along to "Porcupine Pie" and be glad your hands aren't in any danger of turning green. (Look it up, kids; it might get more obscure from here!)

Bake them 6-8 minutes or until they start turning a little brown around the very edges (they'll still look a little pale in the middle). If you make giant monster cookies like I did with my second batch, you'll probably have to bake them a little longer.

While they're in the oven, pick up the cat and sway around the kitchen singing "Song Sung Blue" to him until he's looking at you like you're a crazy person. Ignore his judging stare and carry on getting the cookies out of the oven.

Let them sit on the cookie sheet for 3-5 minutes to finish baking, then transfer them to a newspaper-covered surface. When I was a kid, we'd just cover the dining room table with newspaper and lay them out there, but I don't have that kind of room in my tiny apartment, so now I have these nifty, stackable cooling racks:

From this baking, I got an even two dozen. If you made all normal-sized cookies instead of giant mutant-cookies and didn't eat half the dough like I did, I'm willing to believe you could squeeze 3 dozen from this recipe. If you get more than that, I may accuse you of witchcraft, but, y'know, it's good witchcraft, so well done.

Once they're cool enough to not burn you, dunk one in a glass of milk and chow down! For the ones you can't snarf down in one sitting, store them in tupperware or on a plate covered in plastic wrap. As long as you haven't overbaked them, they'll stay chewy and delicious for about a week without getting stale. That is, of course, unless you eat them all first.

Enjoy!

Chocolate Chip Banana Cookies
Prep/Cook Time: About 1 hour
Servings: 2-3 dozen cookies

Ingredients:
(US Customary)

• 3/4 c. mashed banana (1 1/2 - 2 medium bananas)
• 1/4 c. butter, softened
• 1 c. white sugar
• 1 c. brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 2 c. all-purpose flour
• 2 1/2 c. oatmeal, powderized in blender 1/4 c. at a time
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 bag (12 oz.) chocolate chips
• 1 1/2 c. chopped walnuts (optional)
 

Special Equipment: Electric mixer (although as mentioned above, you could probably get away with mixing by hand if you use very soft butter and have arm muscles of steel). A blender or food processor for breaking down the oats.

Instructions:

1. Cream together mashed banana, butter, white sugar, and brown sugar. Add eggs and vanilla; mix well.

2. In a separate bowl, mix together flour, oatmeal, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Add gradually to banana mixture. Add chocolate chips and nuts (if using). Mix well.

3. Form into golf ball-sized cookies (do not flatten) and bake at 375°F on a well-greased baking sheet 6-8 minutes or until slightly brown around the edges. Remove from oven and let sit on sheet 3-5 minutes, then remove to newspaper-covered surface to cool.

ETA: It has come to my attention that you can also turn these into pumpkin spice cookies with very little extra effort; simply substitute the banana with the same amount of canned pumpkin (not pumpkin pie mix). Add in some cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and allspice (or your favorite premixed pumpkin pie spice blend), and continue with the rest of the recipe as written. Make them next year for Thanksgiving. Even if you live in a country where they don't have Thanksgiving. Make them anyway. Your friends and family will thank you.