Banana Nut Cookies

I was watching an episode of Bobby Flay’s Throw Down on the Food Network a couple weeks ago and they were making chocolate chip cookies.  They looked so good that I had to make some too.  I have a Mrs. Fields Cookie Book which is amazing.  For cookie lovers, I highly recommend this book.  Her recipes make thick, soft, cake-like, cookies instead of flat crunchy cookies.  Here is one of my favorites:

Banana Nut Cookies

Ingredients:

2 2/3 c. all-purpose flour

½ t. baking soda

¼ t. salt

1 c. light brown sugar, firmly packed

½ c. white sugar

1 c. salted butter, softened

1 lg egg

1 t. crème de banana liqueur or pure banana extract

¾ c. (1 medium) mashed ripe banana

2 c. semisweet chocolate chips

1 c. chopped walnuts

Directions:

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.  In medium bowl, combine flour, soda, and salt.  Mix well with a wire whisk.  Set aside.  In a large bowl with an electric mixer, blend sugars at medium speed.  Add butter and mix to form a grainy paste, scraping down the sides of the bowl.  Add egg, extract, and banana, and beat at medium speed until smooth.  Add the flour mixture, 1 c. of chocolate chips, and the walnuts. Blend at low speed until just combined.  Do not overmix.  Drop by rounded tablespoons onto ungreased cookie sheets, 2 inches apart.  Sprinkle cookies with chocolate chips, 6-8 per cookie.  Bake 25-27 minutes or until cookie edges begin to brown.  Transfer immediately to a cool surface with a spatula.

In my test kitchen:

Clint hates nuts.  And I love them.  So I have to add the flour mixture and chocolate chips first, then separate the dough and manually fold in the nuts to my ½ of the cookie dough.  So I usually cut the amount of nuts to ½ c.  I usually add 1 ½ c. of chocolate chips to the batter instead of 1 c. I don’t know how to “sprinkle” the chocolate chips onto rounded tablespoons of dough.  They just fall off.  So I just press 3-4 into the cookie dough ball.  I think mini semi-sweet chocolate chips would also be great in this cookie instead of the regular chips.

This recipe calls for more flour than other recipes, which is why it doesn’t flatten out in the oven.  And it is cooked on a much lower temperature too.  It’s the way I grew up making and eating cookies so I love it!

~Happy Cooking!