Recipes

Quest For A Healthier Cookie

Peanut Butter and Banana Cookies

As all of you who know me are aware, I love to bake cookies. Although I am trying to eat healthier I’m not ready to give up cookie baking. Thus, my quest for healthier cookies.

Peanut Butter Cookies: First Try

Listed in order of ingredients added

2 cups NATURAL peanut butter.
1 ½ cup Demeraia sugar (raw cane sugar)
2 eggs
1 ½ teaspoon baking soda
1 ½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract.

Blended peanut butter and sugar with electric mixer then added the other ingredients. Baked at 350 degrees for 9 minutes.

Issues: The dough was so thick and crumbly that I had to roll into balls and pat down. Once baked, they were still a bit crumbly and a little oily on the bottom. Yet the flavor was delicious. I felt I was on the right track but the recipe needed to be improved.

Peanut Butter Cookies: Second Try

I decided one way to improve the texture might be to add bananas.

In order added
2 cups NATURE peanut butter
2 very ripe bananas
2 eggs
1 ½ pure vanilla extract
1 ½ teaspoon baking soda
1 ½ cups Demerara sugar (raw cane sugar)

By mixing peanut butter with other moist ingredients, I hoped to better blend the peanut butter. I believe I was right about this. There was no oiliness this time. However, while the flavor was delicious two bananas were too much for cookie dough. It was more like batter.

Nevertheless I used a cookie scoop to place the batter on cookie sheets lined with baking liners. Fortunately I left plenty of space between cookies. They spread quite a bit.

As before, I baked at 350 degrees for 9 minutes. The result was very large soft cookies with an excellent flavor, but difficult to move from cookie sheet. I set the cookie sheets on cookie racks for several minutes before attempting to move.

They are good, but I doubt they would hold up well for shipping. I plan to give this recipe another try but with maybe just ½ banana.

UPDATE ONE

Third try did not meet my standards. This time around I used the natural peanut butter with honey. To this I added half a banana and the rest as described above.

The dough was about right, and easy to work with. The problem was that they had a sogginess that remained even when baked. The flavor was good but once again I am not satisfied with the texture. This calls for another try.