Banana Bread Cookies

While banana bread is tasty, it sometimes isn't the best for serving because you have to slice it. To solve this, I designed a recipe that combined the great taste of banana bread in a cookie style that everyone loves. The result is cookies that are crisp on the edges like regular cookies, but have a middle that is the classic banana bread consistency.

Ingredients:

Don't worry, the batter is
supposed to be gloopy.

½ cup of softened unsalted butter

1 cup of sugar

1 egg

2 large bananas

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 cups of flour

¼ teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon of ground cinnamon

¼ teaspoon nutmeg

½ cup sweetened coconut flakes

½ cup semi sweet chocolate chips

½ cup of pecans

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350°F and grease two cookie sheets.

Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add the egg and continue to beat until well combined. Mash the bananas in a separate bowl and add them to your butter/sugar mixture. In another bowl, Mix together the flour, salt, baking soda, cinnamon, and nutmeg and slowly add it to the butter and banana mixture and mix until just combined. Add in the coconut flakes and finally fold in the pecans and chocolate chips.

Drop in spoonfuls of the batter onto parchment paper-lined baking sheet.

Bake for 10-12 minutes or until nicely golden brown. Let cool on wire racks.

In order to make these healthier, you could replace some of the white flour with white whole wheat flour and still get great cookies.

Oatmeal Toffee Cookies

I seriously owe my friend Claire some cookies, so I thought I would make cookies I have already made her before that she loved. The mix of oatmeal, toffee, and coconut makes a moist, crispy, and tasty cookie. The pecans I added also add a nice crunch.

Recipe:

Ingredients:

½ cup softened butter

1 cup packed light brown sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

¾ cups all-purpose flour

The batter for these cookies is especially good.

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

¼ teaspoon fine salt

1 ½ cups quick-cooking oats

½ cup sweetened coconut

1 cup (a little less) toffee bits

½ cup chopped pecans

Directions:

Heat the oven to 375°F and lightly grease cookie sheet

Beat butter, brown sugar, eggs and vanilla. One well blended, add flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. 


Stir in the coconut, oats, toffee bits and pecans. Drop dough by rounded teaspoons about 2 inches apart onto your prepared sheet. 


Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until edges are lightly browned.

These weren’t able to leave my house without a few missing/eaten…oops.

This recipe makes about 24 cookies.

Whole Wheat Pumpkin Bread

Yesterday I was at Starbucks with my friend and she asked for a slice of pumpkin bread. I looked at it and said, “hey I bet I can make pumpkin bread that tastes better and is better for you than that.” My friend was glad to hear this remark because she knew it meant I would try it out and give her some, and since I don’t want to do any homework, that’s exactly what I did!

So here you go, a healthy version of pumpkin bread that doesn’t compromise health for taste.

Recipe:

Getting every last drop
out of the honey.

Ingredients:

1/3 cup unsalted melted butter

¼ cup honey

½ cup plus 2 ½ tablespoons packed brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 tablespoons canola oil

2 eggs

1 ½ cups pumpkin puree

1 ¾ cup white whole wheat flour

½ tsp salt

1 ½ tsp cinnamon

1 tsp baking powder

¼ teaspoon baking soda

¾ cup chopped walnuts or pecans

Directions:

A clever is perfect to chop up nuts.

Preheat the oven to 325°F and lightly grease a 9x5 inch loaf pan. Combine flour, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a bowl. Whisk these dry ingredients together and set aside. In another large bowl, combine the melted butter, canola oil, honey, and ½ cup of the brown sugar and beat until well mixed. Add the eggs and lightly beat and finally mix in pumpkin and vanilla. Slowly add in the flour mixture until combined. Stir in the chopped nuts last.

Crumble the brown sugar evenly
over the entire top layer.

Pour the batter into the greased pan, and tap the bottom so that the batter evens out. Take the last 2 ½ tablespoons of brown sugar and sprinkle it over the top of the batter.

Place the pan into the oven for 55 to 65 minutes.

Remove, and let cool before slicing.

If you don’t give the bread enough time to cool, then your slices will have no chance of coming out even.

The brown sugar on top is a perfect crumble, and especially perfect for people who love the texture of the muffin tops (and by that I don’t mean the rolls coming out on top of your pants).

Whole Wheat Banana Bread & Muffins

So Dad wasn’t very happy with me the other day (not like I did anything wrong- jk love you daddy if you’re reading this!). To make him happy I decided to make his favorite whole what banana bread. He’s not big into cookies and cupcakes, but he loves his banana bread recipe because there is enough sweetness while it’s still decently healthy. The recipe is actually from my grandmother who’s a health nut in Florida, so thanks Nona!

I actually doubled the recipe this time and used half of the batter for bread, and half for muffins

Recipe:

Ingredients:

2 eggs

1 cup sugar

½ cup butter

½ cup sour cream

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon nutmeg

1 cup (basically 2 whole) bananas

1 2/3 cups whole wheat pastry flour

½ cup pecans

 

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 F.

In a large bowl, beat eggs sugar and butter together and mix well. Stir in bananas, sour cream, and vanilla. Stir in flour, nutmeg, baking soda and salt. Chop pecans and then add them to the batter and blend them in.

Grease and flour either a 9x5x3 inch loaf pan or muffin tine. Fill the loaf pan with all the batter or fill the individual muffin cups ¾ of the way full.

If making a regular loaf, bake the bread for 60 minutes or bake the muffins until an inserted toothpick comes in clean (you will obviously need to bake larger muffins for more time, I needed to bake mine for about 15 minutes). If you are making muffins, make sure that you fill cups that are not filled with batter with water in order to prevent the cups from burning.

Remove from oven and let cool before slicing.

I slid a knife around the edges to make it easier to take out
the muffins from the tin.