Banana Chocolate Chip Cookies

I like to watch the food network channel. Sometimes I can find good recipes and at the very least I almost always get inspiration for creating new ones. One day we were flipping channels and ended up on Kelsey’s Essentials. The recipe of the day just happened to be banana cookies with a combo of ingredients I’d never seen before. That caught my attention for a little while, but I wasn’t feeling inspired to make them. My husband said, “We need to make those.” You got it, dude! He was my inspiration for whipping up these cookies. 🙂

These cookies are the perfect combination of banana bread, a chocolate chip cookie, and an oatmeal cookie.

Banana Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe
(Makes 30 cookies)

Ingredients:

1 cup white sugar
3/4 cup shortening
2 overripe bananas, mashed
1 large egg
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 and 3/4 cups rolled oats (also known as old fashioned oats)
1 and 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
In a large bowl, cream the sugar and shortening together.
Mix in the mashed bananas, egg, and vanilla extract. Set the wet ingredients aside.
In a large bowl, whisk together the oats, flour, baking soda, cinnamon, salt, and nutmeg.
Add the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix until all of the ingredients are just combined.
Stir in the chocolate chips.
Scoop about 2 tablespoons of dough for each cookie. The cookie dough is wet so using a cookie scoop is ideal for dealing with it. (I used a medium size Oxo cookie scoop.)
Bake them in the preheated oven for about 18 minutes or until they are golden brown. I placed 10 cookies per baking sheet because they don’t spread much during the baking process.

Store in an air tight container at room temperature or in a freezer friendly bag in the freezer.

These cookies are super quick to whip up. I made this batch in about an hour.

Yes, there are healthy bananas and oats in these cookies. No, these are not healthy cookies. Hey, if that’s what you want to tell yourself to feel better about eating them then who am I to stop you from thinking that. 😉

These cookies are so moist, like a light banana bread. I usually freeze my cookies and my husband is notorious for grabbing one of them straight from the freezer. Normally he will chomp on them while they are still so hard they could chip a tooth. These aren’t hard at all right out of the freezer! It’s cookie magic. 😉

These have the perfect banana flavor and just the right amount of chocolaty goodness in them. As if by magic (yes, more magic in one cookie) the chocolate chips provide an awesome crunch. You read that right, crunch, from a chocolate chip. Okay, this isn’t true if you choose to eat them right out of the oven, but a soft oatmeal cookie gets exactly the right amount of extra texture from the chocolate. See? Magic. 🙂

There are a bazillion banana cookie recipes floating around. Yes, literally a bazillion. 😉 While I’ve not tried all bazillion of them, this one really nails it. Everyone that has tried them loves them. I love them. My husband loves them (good thing, since it was his suggestion that we make these). My sister is picky with banana flavored goodies and even she loves these cookies. My two nephews each gave me two thumbs up. Loving that! The list goes on from here, but I think you get the idea. Banana cookies that even people who don’t like banana stuff like? Rock on.