Bananas. In A Cookie?

Yeah, kind of weird, I know. I was looking for recipes to use up my over-ripe bananas and wanted something more than my usual banana and ginger cake (which gives #2 a sore belly) or banana muffins (which were delicious but I already tried them) or banana and walnut bread (that's winter comfort food and it's too hot now for that). A funny thing happened, for every banana cake recipe I found I came across a banana cookie recipe. Who ever thought of putting bananas in cookies? To me, cookies are kind of crispy and crunchy while bananas are soft and not exactly an ingredient I would consider. But, venturing bravely into new ... um... ventures (I'm tired and that's as good as it's going to get today, sorry!) I decided to give it a try and came up with these Banana Oatmeal Cookies. They are less cookie-like and more small-cake-like with a fluffy-ish texture. They were quite nice when I served them an hour or so after they were baked, and certainly our play-date guests polished them off happily, but they have gone soft and kind of soggy since then - only to be expected I guess but still disappointing. I'll probably let the kids have one or two with some ice-cream for dessert tomorrow night. The original recipe reportedly makes 4 dozen cookies. I halved the recipe (and made some necessary adjustments), not wanting to be stuck with oodles of cookies if they weren't all that flash, and still ended up with 3 dozen. Luckily they are only little.

The original recipe was from Wonderful Ways to Prepare Cakes and Cookies, bought from Coles New World sometime in the late 1970's. This was one of my Nan's cook books and I have kept it simply because it had a wonderful, at the time, peanut butter cookie recipe. Of course I have never made those cookies again and would probably think they were fairly disgusting now but at least I used the book today, thereby vindicating my decision to cart it round the countryside for the last umpteen years!

I still didn't use the sour cream so I'm thinking that nachos or tacos might be making a dinner appearance in the very near future.

Banana Oatmeal Cookies

3/4 cup sifted plain flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon bicarb soda

pinch salt

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1/2 cup sugar

85g butter or margarine (I used butter and they ended up flat so I thing marg would be better)

1 egg

2/3 cup mashed banana (2 over-ripe bananas)

3/4 cup rolled oats

choc bits

1. Sift together flour, baking powder, bicarb soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg and sugar.

2. Add butter/margarine, egg and half the mashed banana. Beat with an electic mixer until creamy.

3. Fold in remaining banana and oats.

4. Drop from a teaspoon onto a greased cookie tray. Top each cookie with a choc bit.

5. Bake in a 190 degree Celcius oven for 15-20 minutes until golden. They will still be soft.

6. Leave cookies to set on cookie tray and transfer to a wire rack to cool.