This recipe is a great beginning but a few changes are necessary to make the cookies the type that everyone raves about: 1.Add a banana to the mush and a quarter-cup of oatmeal for more banana flavor otherwise you barely get the taste. 2. Skip the cloves add another teaspoon of cinnamon. 3. Add a 1/2-3/4 teaspoon of baking soda so that the cookies rise a bit they don't in the original recipe. 4. Switch half of the white flour w/ whole wheat flour it tastes the same and is much healthier. 5. Use white choc. chips!--huge difference goes much better w/ banana taste. These changes make the cookies superb and your friends won't stop asking for more!
This deserves five stars. (And I'm stingy with giving out five star ratings.) The cookies are soft slightly spicy and absolutely delicious. I didn't have cloves so I used a bit of pumpkin pie spice and the results were fantastic. The cookie sheet was ravaged by my husband and I before the cookies even had a chance to cool. EDIT: January 29 2009 I've been making these for a few years now and they are always awesome. I add a bit more banana and vanilla and some nutmeg and extra cinnamon- I like a lot of spice in my cookies. I have also used butter and margarine or a mix because of the whole trans fat thing. (No more margarine for me!) I have also added milk chocolate chips to half of the cookies for my hubby. Still a keeper after all these years!:)
This is a good cookie it's just not a great cookie. Other than using butter rather than shortening I followed the recipe as written. This is not short on flavor as the oatmeal banana and nutty flavors are all prominent. It has a rustic whole grain texture not cakey at all just that of a chewy oatmeal cookie. There is nothing wrong with the recipe but it will never make a chocolate chip cookie move over.
Tired of banana bread I chose this recipe as a way of using up ripe bananas. I used four bananas (not one) margarine instead of shortening extra cinnamon no cloves and some chocolate chips but otherwise kept the quantities of the ingredients unchanged. The result was a very moist and tasty cake-like cookie which was particularly good fresh from the oven. I was surprised at how many cookies it made. I shall make these again when I have bought too many bananas!
I didn't hae bananas for once but had some banana cream pudding mix used that instead. After doing so I realized I should have perhaps added more moisture to take the place of the wetness of the fruit but actually these turned out great. I made them three ways 1)rolled in balls - they formed puffy domes all nice and soft 2)rolled in balls and flattened slightly - nice thick even cookies that were crispy on the outside soft on the inside 3)spooned out and flattened pretty well - crisp crunchies. My family loved the three kinds from just one batch. Good stuff!
SOOO good interesting as well. I used butter instead of shortening nutmeg instead of cloves omitted the walnuts and added 3/4 c chocolate chunks (mostly due to what I had or did not have). Like other reviewers I also needed to bake them for 12 min. Will make again!
These cookies were really yummy especially after adding raisins and a handful of unsweetened shredded coconut. I made them plain and with the above additions and the raisin-coconut addition made them soooo much better. I like the plain ones too but my boyfriend only likes the ones with the extras. (I didn't have walnuts so neither of the batches had them). I should mention that I tried to make these a bit healthier by using only 1/2 cup of shortening and adding extra banana to increase moistness...I used 1 cup banana and it worked great. Also I didn't have cloves on hand so I used pumpkin pie spice like someone suggested and it worked well. In the end these are a nice change from banana bread but I think I still prefer to use my extra bananas for banana bread.
They are soft cookies but do not have the texture of cakes (which is good). The rolled oats give them a good texture. The taste is not bad but need some getting used to. I cut the shortening to 1/2 C sugar to 3/4 C and used pumpkin pie spice instead of cloves. Also instead of adding walnuts I substitute with chocolate chips (1 C). In addition I used 3 medium-sized bananas. Two thumbs up for the fact that they are healthy cookies:)
Yum! I used a 1/2 cup real butter (I never use shortening) & doubled the banana for moisture 1/2 cup whole wheat flour 1/2 cup white flour and I did not have enough brown sugar so I used 1/2 cup brown & 1/2 cup white. I also only used about 1/8 tsp cloves as I did not want to over-power the banana flavor. These turned out WAY better than I expected and I found it hard to stop eating the uncooked dough! I will definately use this recipe again.
