Banana Granola Cookies

I love bananas. I really do – I love them sliced in cereal, and I especially love them with peanut butter. What I don’t love about bananas is their shelf life. They take forever to ripen, probably have brown spots in them that you have to cut out, and once they’re ripe they’re good for about two days until they over-ripen and get gross. As you know, they get brown, and super soft and mushy (not a nice consistency). One thing, though – if you notice when they’re over-ripe, the flavor really intensifies and that makes them great as an ingredient.

So, if you buy a bunch of bananas and one or two get too brown for your liking, leave the banana out to get fully brown (but not so brown that it’s starting to fall apart), and then put it in the freezer. Seriously, just throw the brown banana in the freezer until you’re ready to use it. It’ll last for a few months there, and will make a great ingredient in cookies, well, like this one. This is a pretty simple recipe that’s not too sweet, but has a really nice banana flavor to it.

If you like that sort of thing.

Difficulty: easy
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Ingredients

· ½ cup butter, softened to room temperature

· 1 cup sugar

· 1/3 cup ripe banana, mashed up (room temperature, so take it out of the freezer before you’re ready to use it and let it defrost)

· 1 ½ t vanilla

· 1 egg

· 2 ¼ cups flour

· 1 t baking soda

· 1/8 t ground nutmeg

· 1 3/4 cups granola (no raisins, because they’re evil and they actually don’t really go here, anyway)

Directions

Mix the butter and sugar with a hand mixer until light and fluffy, maybe three minutes. Next, add in the banana, vanilla and egg and beat that as well until well blended.

Overripe bananas are supremely, disgustingly ugly. But the flavor is intense and that’s perfect for these cookies

In a separate bowl whisk together the flour, baking soda and nutmeg. Then, add that mixture to the butter mixture and mix once again, until well blended.

Pour in the granola and mix that in with a wooden spoon – don’t use the mixer. Once you’re done there, drop them by tablespoons onto a cookie sheet coated with parchment paper.

Bake at 325 for 13-15 minutes, or until they start to brown. Let them set on the pan for a couple minutes, then transfer them to a wire rack to finish cooling.