Banana Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

My family has been eating through our bananas too fast lately! My sister and her boyfriend consume almost all of them when they go surfing. Sadly, that leaves me infrequently with browned bananas. Luckily, this week, I had two laying around and searched the wonderful World Wide Web for a different way to use them instead of my usual fallback, the Stevia-sweetened Banana Bread.

I came across this fantastic-looking banana oatmeal chocolate chip cookie from Chefsavvy. I chose this because the photo looked great and there was only 1/4 cup butter for 2 dozen cookies! Relatively healthy and easy, so I opted to try this. Plus, my co-worker's been subtly (not, haha) trying to get me to bake cookies and bring them into work. Last week, I tried these healthy oil and butter oatmeal chocolate chip cookie recipe from HEB but was underwhelmed. They were too cakey and spread out too far, but that could have been because I didn't have rolled oats so replaced them with ground steel cut oats. Anyhow, this recipe is a show-stopper. I did not have brown sugar at home so I used molasses, and then added some ground steel cut oats because the batter was a little sticky. Everyone at work really liked it.

Banana Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
makes 20-24 cookies
adapted from Chefsavvy.com
Ingredients
1 medium banana, mashed
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup molasses
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/4 cup all purpose flour
1 cup rolled oats
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
Just under 1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup dark chocolate chips
1/4 cup ground steel-cut oats (not exact, pour some steel-cut oats in a coffee/spice grinder or food processor and process till somewhat fine - not as fine as flour)

Directions
1. Preheat the oven to 350 deg Fahrenheit. Prepare 2 baking sheets with lightly greased parchment paper.
2. In a large bowl, beat the banana, butter, sugar, and molasses till thoroughly mixed. Beat in the egg and vanilla. 
3. In a medium bowl, mix the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt.
4. Fold the flour mixture into the wet mixture. Stir in the dark chocolate chips and ground steel-cut oats.
5. Place rounded tablespoon scoops of dough on the parchment paper. Make sure to place about 2" apart. Staggering helps.
 

Because I'm Lazy: Food Slideshow

Hiiii. I am avoiding doing homework and studying but being productive in other creative ways by posting up the food things I've been exploring these past couple of months. Again, it's been a few months since I last posted, and since then I've baked and cooked and eaten quite a lot. Below is a collection of goods that I've made. Recipes may follow...

One day.

:-P

To prevent overloading of this page with photos, I'll do them in series.

The first part of the series will be what I did over winter break, after the donuts that I wrote about in the last post.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies (repeat)

These never last long...

Fruit Tart (wheat+walnut crust, pastry cream, fresh fruit, apricot glaze)

Homemade pastry cream: egg yolks, almond milk, sugar, vanilla

Drizzled with Dove dark chocolate ganache

Pandan Mini Baked Donuts

Light cakes, perfect without icing, probably enhanced with coconut frosting

 Mango Peach Jam Cake

From my Diabetic Cooking Cookbook, my favorite cookbook even though I'm not diabetic!

Organic mango peach jam layers the middle

Healthy, perfect breakfast or snack cake, and uses flaxmeal for egg

That's what I'll tease you all with for now. Lots more to come, including full-fledged meals with meat! Look, ma, I cooked!

--------

LIFE, Now

-------

By the way, it's been pouring nonstop here in Berkeley. Man! It's crazy weather!!! There may be a couple minutes here and there where it stops, but then it starts up again like a shower in the sky. Poor E-Week events were dampened (pardon the pun) by the rain. No ultimate frisbee competition, but the carnival is still going on in Hearst Mining, which looked so fun. Too bad I have work (right now, poo) and can't go to it.

Wow, 2 more months and then I graduate!!! I've already selected to go to Texas A&M, College Station, to do my PhD in Biomedical Engineering, starting Fall 2012. So excited! I'm already planning how I'm getting groceries, where I'm living, places I want to eat and try, and dreaming of opening and managing a Trader Joe's while I'm doing my 5-6 year PhD there. Haha, crazy weather makes a crazy mind. Change is about, my friends, and the future shall bring to us its mysteries!!!

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

I absolutely love pumpkin. Ralph's, year-round, has these amazing Pumpkin Chocolate Chip cookies. My mom first found these 2 years ago. They are huge and so light. We fell in love with them. I don't know how Ralph's does it, but they are heaven in your mouth. I wanted to try my hand at them last year and found a recipe on allrecipes.com. This year, I made another batch, but did the whole recipe this time, coming out with 55 cookies! I gave bags away to 4 friends and family. Everyone enjoyed it. My family loves how these cookies are so fluffy. My sister said they are like pillows! Baking it for 13 minutes rather than 15 keeps the soft texture.

The recipe can be found here (I didn't use walnuts). I used an ice cream scooper to try and keep all of my cookies a uniform size. I also never have nutmeg, so I threw in some ground ginger and cloves. Nutmeg would be nice to have one day...Oh, and I also changed half whole wheat flour and half brown sugar, just so I could get my favorite nutty, hearty flavor in there. Pumpkin may be associated with the autumn holidays, but this shows that pumpkin is a treat to be enjoyed throughout the year!

White and Wheat Snickerdoodles

I love holidays. They are the perfect excuses for me to bake sweets for fun. I'm always in for some good exploration in baking, and July 4th just happens to come along. I have a book at home from Pillsbury called, "Cookies, Brownies, and Bars," and it's a fabulous collection of these baked goods. Everything in there sounds and looks delectable. One of the ones I've been itching to make is their Wheat Snickerdoodles. I absolutely love things with cinnamon, and to have it paired with a sugar cookie??? Fantastic creation, truly. And, now, Pillsbury has the genius to add wheat flour to the recipe to add that hint of nuttiness and heartiness that I love. I just had to make these things.

It was rather quick to make, I just couldn't find my cream of tartar, so I switched it with equivalent fresh lime juice. The recipe said to roll it into balls then roll these in cinnamon sugar, but the dough was too sticky to do so. I added some extra flour to the dough to try to make it pliable, but it still was sticky. Instead, I just plopped tablespoons of dough onto the cookie sheets and sprinkled the cinnamon sugar over them. I was really happy taking them out of the oven: I didn't burn them! :D When you first take a bite, it takes a second for the flavor to hit you, but when it does...Mmmm!!! It takes so good. The buttery sugary goodness is heaven in the form of a cookie. Enjoy!

White and Wheat Snickerdoodles (adapted from Pillsbury)
8 Tbsp (1 stick) butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup unbleached flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp fresh lime juice
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 Tbsp sugar
2 tsp cinnamon

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Beat sugar and butter until light and fluffy. Blend in vanilla and eggs.
2. Stir in both flours, lime juice, baking soda, and salt. Mix well.
3. Combine remaining sugar and cinnamon. Drop dough by tablespoons onto ungreased baking sheets, 2 inches apart, and attempt to mold into round shapes. Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar.
4. Bake 10 minutes. Remove from baking sheets immediately and let cool on rack. Serves 30.