Banana- Chocolate Chunk Cookies

A banana cake with chocolate chips that I prepared not long ago (recipe here) made me completely reconsider the use of bananas for making cakes and other sweet baked goods. Since then I am not worried anymore when bananas I buy start becoming overripe...I can always use them to prepare something good for breakfast!
Bananas makes baked goods particularly moist and flavorful (bananas have their own peculiar flavor that is not easy to hide) and absolutely pleasant...These cookies are a combination of two bakery most beloved classics: chocolate chip cookies (who doesn't love them?) and banana bread. The result is really enjoyable: a light crust encloses a soft pastry enriched, both in flavor and texture, by pieces of chocolate and rolled oats (the original recipe calls also for walnuts, that I cannot eat and don't like and therefore omitted). The recipe comes from "Cookies" by Martha Stewart, a book I love as it gives me great inspirations: this time I just eliminated walnuts and reduced butter and sugar (as I do most of the times I follow an American recipe). Absolutely worth trying!

Banana and chocolate chips scones

I've finally had to accept the idea that not all the bananas I buy will be eaten as a fruit; for some reasons, one or more become overripe so fast that their destiny. if they are not too bad to be necessarily wasted, is to be used as an ingredient of a baking recipe. Since I made this banana cake with chocolate chips, that really made me change my mind on any kind of baked goods containing banana as a main ingredient, I started experimenting with this fruit: since banana gives a pleasant, particular moistness to baked stuff, it is possible to make very nice things without adding much fat (butter or oil or any other kind of shortening); it is also possible to reduce the quantity of sugar, taking advantage of the natural sweetness of the fruit, and even avoiding to use eggs since bananas have a natural thickening action.
These banana and chocolate chips scones are absolutely worth trying; soft, moist and - trust me - with a really light texture! They are perfect for an healthy, energetic breakfast, as well as for the afternoon tea-time but also give them to your children for breakfast or as a snack (especially if they don't like to eat fruit).

Banana cake with chocolate chips

Before making this recipe I did not take into great consideration banana cakes or breads. I thought of them as "second choice" cakes, made not much for the love of banana cakes as for using some overripe bananas sitting in the kitchen. Maybe because I don't like bananas (probably I didn't eat even as a child) or because most of the banana cakes I've tried had walnuts inside (and I have a sort of allergy to walnuts); or maybe the strange color that bananas give to the cake or... I don't know exactly, but I had never considered to make a banana cake before. But I have a two years old son who has a strange relation with bananas: there are days when I have to go out and buy bananas because he sees another kid eating a banana on the beach and wants one too; but there are also other days - usually when I have plenty of bananas in the kitchen- in which he looks at bananas as they were the last food in the world he would eat. And so the poor bananas, after becoming more and more yellow, finally turn brown and seem to say: "please decide what to do with us". If there is just one too ripe banana, I can throw it, but if they are more I think it's a shame. And just too many overripe bananas are the origin of this cake which made me change idea about banana cakes. Because it is delicious, much more than I ever expected.