Baking for a Break

We had quite the interesting evening last night on our little cul-de-sac. The least important - there was a false fire alarm a couple of houses down, sending us nosy neighbors out into the rain to check things out around 10p (usually way past my bedtime, btw). And, earlier in the evening, my kid's best bud across the road tumbled off his trampoline and endured a pretty nasty arm break. Ick.

We were supposed to have the kid's first flag football game today, but due to rain, it was cancelled, so I took the opportunity to whip out some cookies for our peeps across the street. I doubled the recipe so we could also benefit from the cookies (duh), and since I completely and totally forgot to tell my parents that the flag football game was cancelled and they went anyway, they will also receive some cookies.

I happened across this recipe whilst (!) planning my weekly meals, and saw that I had every single ingredient on hand. That's called a no-brainer, peeps.

Banana Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
Source: Cooking Light, July 2009

Ingredients:

• 1/2 c. mashed ripe banana (about 1 medium)
• 1/2 c. packed brown sugar
• 1/4 c. butter, softened
• 1/2 c. granulated sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 large egg
• 5.6 oz all-purpose flour (about 1.25 cups)
• 2 c. old-fashioned oats
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 c. semi-sweet chocolate chips
• Cooking spray

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees
• Combine first 5 ingredients in a large bowl; beat with a mixer at medium speed until smooth. Add egg; beat well.
• Weigh or lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. Combine flour, oats, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl, stirring with a whisk. Add flour mixture to banana mixture in bowl; beat with a mixer at medium speed until well blended. Stir in chocolate chips.
• Drop batter by heaping tablespoonfuls 2 inches apart onto baking sheets coated with cooking spray. Bake for 18 minutes or until golden. Cool on pans 2 minutes. Remove cookies from pans; cool completely on wire racks.

Yield: 2 dozen (serving size: 1 cookie)
Per cookie: 115 calories; 3.6g fat (sat: 2g; mono 1.1g; poly: 0.3g) protein: 2g; carb: 19.1g; fiber: 1.2g; chol: 14mg; sodium: 121mg calc: 10mg

Reviews:
First: Notice what's missing? Oil! Yay!
Second: This was very easy to prepare, and I was able to whip out two batches very quickly. Also - typically when I make cookies (not too often - kind of suck at it, to be honest) - the yield is never true to recipe. But this time it was! This made a ton of cookies!
Third: The kid thought the cookie was so-so (he threw half out), but both the hubs and I liked these cookies a lot. Think kind of crunchy banana chocolate chip bread. Bam!

Ranking:
Three Forks

Other random ranking: Ohio State: ZERO FORKS for the almost heart-attack they gave Buckeye Nation today.

Lots of cookies - batch one

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