Now that I’m living alone, I find the rate of consumption of bananas has slowed tremendously.  So, what does a baker do?  I’ve been freezing the poor bananas that I don’t get around to eating and have gone into overripe mode.  With a freezer shelf filling up with bananas, I had to do something.  So I decided to see if I can make a cookie version of one of my favorite post run recovery sandwiches, the Peanut butter banana sandwich with honey.

The tricky part about adding bananas into a recipe is how to deal with the additional moisture content it contributes.  Where do I cut back, where should I add more?  In the past, I’ve found myself with some rather soggy cookies, and have stopped using them in cookies, and just using them in quick breads.

Today I tried again.  I based my cookies on the Peanut Butter Cookies out of my handy dandy America’s Test Kitchen Family Baking Book.

Now, the substitutions/additions:

Added two mashed bananas (one was fresh, the other was frozen and defrosted in the fridge for two days)

Substituted a 1/2 cup of all purpose flour with a 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour

Added a tablespoon plus a few squirts of Honey

Substituted two cups of sugars with a generous half cup (unpacked) of Brown sugar and skimpy half cup of granulated sugar.

Substituted 2 sticks of butter with one stick of butter at room temp (more or less).

Then I went through the motions, and the first thing I noticed was that the batter    was much mushier than it would be if I followed the recipe.  Therefore cross hatching was not necessary.

When all said and done, the cookie that resulted was nice and soft in texture.  There is a wonderful peanut butter flavor and the banana is present, but not overwhleming.  It does kind of taste like I was eating the sandwich, although the honey is absent.  Perhaps next time a little more might be necessary.

The usual yield is a lot.  I estimate I got about 65 my size cookies.

Time find some people to take these off my hands before I eat them all!