Are you ready to go bananas for the most delicious, chewy, peanut butter-chocolatey cookie you’ve ever tasted? Get ready my friends to experience my original Monkey Cookie Recipe. This recipe is a family legend. 😉
After our second child was born, our family started changing our eating habits. We cut out all white flour, white sugar, white rice, and replaced them for whole grains. Basically, we tried to cut out processed food, and eat as much whole food as possible. I love to bake, and started to modify a chocolate chip cookie recipe to see how healthy I could make it. I replaced the butter for olive oil and peanut butter. I reduced the sugar as much as I could before it started to change the texture of the cookie. I added just enough banana for flavor and sweetness, but not so much that they became cakey rather than perfect cookie chewy. I replaced the flour with whole wheat (these work great with any Gluten Free blend as well), and replaced white sugar with turbinado or raw sugar. These cookies can easily be dairy-free and vegan, as long as you use chocolate chips that fit the bill.
It took lots of experimenting and tweaking, but I have to say, this recipe is perfection. We almost always have the ingredients on hand, and these cookies are so easy I could make them in my sleep. The other great part is this recipe takes no eggs, so the dough is perfectly edible as is. This means my children can eat as much batter as they wish, without being concerned about salmonella. My philosophy is the fewer cookies I have to bake, the better, and I get mega mom points. hehe
When we lived in the tropics of Panama, I would sometimes need to pop the dough in the fridge for a bit to firm it up. (I would also have to store my frosting in the freezer while cake decorating or it would literally slide right off! Just to put a little perspective to the heat/humidity factor. hehe) In California or Colombia, I have never needed to refrigerate the dough. Although I have stored it in the fridge to bake later, which makes warm cookies doable in 10 minutes any time of the day or night.
The recipe below makes 3 dozen cookies, which is just a snack for my troop. I usually triple the recipe. 🙂 I also use a small cookie scoop (about a heaping tablespoon) to plop out the dough. The dough doesn’t spread much when baking, so you can stick them closer together than most chocolate chip cookies. I LOVE my baking stone, but before I had one, I would always use parchment paper or a silicone baking mat to make clean up a breeze.
| Prep Time | 15 minutes |
| Cook Time | 8 minutes |
| Servings | dozen |
- ⅓ cup nut butter
- 1 ¼ cup sugar
- 1 cup ripe banana mashed (2 large bananas)
- 2 cups flour
- 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ¾ cups chocolate chips
Ingredients
| |
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.
- Mix oil, sugar, and nut butter until creamy.
- Add mashed banana and mix again.
- Stir in the flour mixture until well blended.
- Stir in chocolate chips.
- Grab some spoons to give children samples, or you will be fighting little fingers as you scoop.
- Place on a cookie sheet and bake 8 minutes. They will still be soft, but the bottoms lightly brown.
- Let them sit for a minute, then they will be firm enough to move to a wire rack to cool.
This dough is perfect to use in other "cookie dough" desserts. We like to substitute mini-chips, and roll this into tiny balls to put in the freezer. Then we add them to cheesecakes or our homemade ice cream for a "cookie dough" version.