Molly's Banana-Filled Chocolate Chip Cookies

I love taking requests. Yesterday I was working with Molly, who we call Mole, and she was totally bummed that I didn't have any sweets for her- I always bring baked goods to work. So I asked her what she wanted me to make for her and she said something with banana. She likes anything that's moist, so banana is the ideal ingredient for that. I was thinking about a banana bread, I have an Early Grey Banana Bread recipe I've been wanting to try, and also a Buttermilk Banana Bread that has been on the back burner for a few weeks. But I wanted to try something a little different than a bread so *BRAINSTORM* what about a chocolate chip cookie with bananas baked in the center? So this is what I wanted my cookie to look like:

That recipe can be found here, the creator actually uses baby cereal in her cookie recipe- weird and no thanks. But her cookie came out beautiful and exactly how I pictured the banana layer in my mind.

I wanted to focus more on having the most awesome chocolate chip cookie and then adding in the banana layer thus perfecting one of the best flavor combos in the history of time: chocolate and banana. So I chose to use the America's Test Kitchen recipe, which is pretty freaking awesome. I bookmarked the recipe on Natalie's Killer Cuisine since she had really great pics.

The only thing I did differently, because I was feeling lazy is I didn't brown the butter. The cookie has a more nutty, rich flavor if you do, but it's still a perfectly rockin cookie if you just use soft butter (microwaved to softness in my case) and cream it with the sugar like in a normal cookie. I also didn't do that thing where they whisk in one egg at a time and blah blah blah I have a life and can't spend an hour on that stuff. So here goes:

Ingredients:

1¾ cups (8¾ ounces) AP flour
½ teaspoon baking soda

14 tablespoons (1¾ sticks) unsalted butter
½ cup (3½ ounces) granulated sugar
¾ cup (5¼ ounces) dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon table salt
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
1¼ cups semisweet chocolate chips or chunks
¾ cup chopped pecans or walnuts, toasted (optional)

Method: (Preheat oven to 375)

1. Mix flour and baking soda in one bowl, set aside
2. With an electric mixer cream the butter and sugar until light brown
3. Add salt, vanilla, eggs and mix until blended
4. Add flour in 2 parts and mix until blended
5. Add chocolate chips and optional nuts and mix until just combined
6. Drop heaping tablespoons onto baking sheet and please don't crowd them like I did and like I always do or they will melt together and look so rediculous like mine did.
7. Press into each cookie a few pieces of sliced banana (thinly sliced) and pop them in the oven for 12 minutes to start, check cookies and add 2 more mins or so if they are still raw. Cookies are done when they are nice and brown around the edges and still soft in the very middle
8. Let them cool on the tray for a bit before removing them- these guys are still a little chewy in the center, esp. because of the banana.

So mine basically melted into one huge cookie because I crowded then on the tray and because I made my cookies too big. Next time I will give them more room, and keep the cookies to 2 Tbsp sized balls. I am also looking into using a cookie that just doesn't spread as much as these, with more flour or something so they look more like the prototype cookie in the Clumbsy Cookie blog.

Anyway, I just dropped off the cookies to Molly at her job and she liked them, they do taste awesome, but this recipe needs some tweaking to get in the all-time fave list.

Photo Credit: Clumbsy Cookie