Bake Off Banana Cookies

Caramello, Jeanne and Gary are hosting the Great Bloggers Bake Off on October 15th and 16th October. This is the Nyamake Family submission:

BANANA COOKIES

The banana makes them proper squidgy in the middle but crisp round the edges. They also have pecans and chocolate chips so that they are crunchy.

Ingredients

  • 150g/5½oz unsalted butter
  • 175g/6oz golden caster sugar
  • 1 medium egg, lightly beaten
  • 175g/6oz plain flour
  • ½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
  • ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • pinch salt
  • 75g/2½oz pecans, roughly chopped
  • 75g/2½oz dark chocolate chips
  • 2 ripe bananas (200g/7oz peeled weight), mashed

Method

Cream the butter with the sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg and beat until thoroughly incorporated. Sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda, cinnamon and salt into the bowl and mix until barely combined. Add the pecans chocolate chips and mashed banana and mix everything thoroughly. Cover the bowl and chill for an hour.

Preheat the oven to 180C/160C Fan/Gas 4 and line two baking sheets with baking parchment.

Shape level tablespoons of dough into balls and place onto the baking sheets. Slightly flatten each cookie with your hands and bake in batches on the middle shelf of the preheated oven for twelve minutes until crisp on top and golden brown.

Remove from the oven and leave on the baking sheets – before transferring to your Mum’s posh cake-stand.

Caramello asked who we share the joy of baking with. Baking is a family effort in our house. If someone decided they want to make something, everyone gravitates towards the kitchen and wants to help. Most times, it is our family that do the eating too.

But Mum makes proper whopping sized cakes, which she takes to her Bible classes. We are totally onboard with sharing the joy of baking.

If you want to take part in The 2022 Great Bloggers Bake Off, then send your pictures into Caremello now.

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Awe

I’ve been sitting down and working it all out – and I am not sure how I am going to afford it. I am going to have to give things up – here and there. I’m fed up. There is nothing I want to give up, but there are hard decisions ahead to avoid the bank taking away my credit card.

Then I step out of the door, and there it is…there it is again…the proof I need that life is for living, that life is precious, that I am rich beyond words. I have seen sunsets before. I have seen magnificent sunsets before. But it is one of those sunsets that stabs joy into my core and leaves me staggered.

I live on the most extraordinary and the most abundant planet in all the universe. I am wealthy beyond all measure. Somebody gave this to me and forgot to send the invoice. All they asked was “take care of it”.

Why wouldn’t I be willing to give things up, to make sacrifices to look after this? So what if I cannot afford the things the marketing dudes tell me I cannot live without? Humans survived thousands of years without those things.

I can’t afford a new phone. It’s as simple as that, cannot afford it. But I can afford to make banana cookies. So I am going to sit out on the front step and watch the sunset and eat one and remember I am blessed beyond all measure. I am in awe!