Banana Bread Cookies
The gourmet-cookie version of chocolate chip banana bread, these are the fancier, bakery-style sister to my banana cookies and everyone who has tried them has become obsessed.
These cookies are soft, tender, and, most of all, amazingly flavorful (thanks to banana and brown butter!). I’m asked often what I do with my leftover baked goods and my sister, (Nikki, she helps me in the kitchen) takes most of them to her soccer teams (she’s on 4 teams!) to share. I often use their reaction as a gauge for the success of a recipe. These cookies were a hit and were quickly devoured, and I think/hope you will all love them just as much!
Why You’ll Love This Recipe
No chilling! Alright, technically there’s no chilling. You do need to let the brown butter cool down, but the dough won’t need an extra stint in the fridge like is required for my brown butter chocolate chip cookies. Gourmet, larger than life appearance. These are simply irresistible and belong right up there beside my thick chocolate chip cookies. These are definitely cookies you’d see in a bakery display case! Actually tastes like banana bread. Toasting the nuts and butter, using real bananas, and adding just a pinch of cinnamon really makes the flavor come through (but at the same time, the texture isn’t too cakey, it feels like a cookie!) No mixer needed! Since we are starting with melted butter. And if you use a scale to measure your ingredients, you won’t even need to dirty measuring cups. I’m all for saving dishes! 😉
What You Need
You don’t need too many ingredients for this recipe, and luckily most will already be in your pantry. SAM’S TIP: A sprinkle of coarse granulated sugar on top of the cookies is so pretty and lends a bakery-style banana bread feel. I’m using the same sugar I recently shared in my sourdough chocolate chip muffins and linked to it below in case you want to try it too (but plain old granulated will work in a pinch!). This is just an overview of the ingredients I used and why. For the full recipe please scroll down to the bottom of the post!
How to Make Banana Bread Cookies
Brown the butter + toast the nuts
Cook the butter and pecans in a saucepan over medium-low heat until the butter has browned and the nuts are toasted. The butter will foam, pop, and sizzle quite a bit during this process; just keep stirring and looking for clues that it is done (nutty aroma and brown bits on the bottom of the pan). Now, I like to brown the butter and toast the nuts together, 2 birds, 1 stone and all that. However, it is slightly more of an advanced skill than simply browning butter, so feel free to toast the pecans separately and then brown the butter, then combine the two instead. When your butter is browned (and the nuts toasted), pour it into a large heatproof bowl to cool. You can speed this up by placing the bowl in the fridge, if you’d like, but don’t let the butter re-solidify.
Make the dough
Whisk the dry ingredients together in a new bowl while the butter cools and set aside. Once the butter is cooled (or at least mostly cooled/just barely warm), mash the banana into the cooled butter and nuts. Double-check that the butter mixture doesn’t feel too warm, then add in the sugars, egg yolks, and vanilla and stir until everything is well combined, then gradually add the flour mixture.
Add the chocolate
Fold in the chocolate chips until they are well incorporated and you have a cohesive dough.
Scoop and bake
Scoop dough into ¼ cup/95 gram portions (yesss, these are big ones!) and place on parchment lined baking sheets. Bake until the edges start to turn light golden brown and let cool completely before removing from the baking sheet.
SAM’S TIP: Like many of my cookie recipes, we will slightly underbake these cookies in the oven and let them cool completely on their baking sheets. This allows them to finish cooking outside the oven for perfectly soft and chewy results! Note that if you break into them while they’re still warm, they’ll seem slightly underdone at the centers, so let them cool completely.
Just like my brown sugar pop tart cookies and blueberry muffin cookies, this is another gourmet cookie that nobody asked for but that I just had so much fun developing and being creative with anyway. I sincerely hope you love it as much as I do (let me know either way!).
Enjoy! -Sam
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