Banana Chocolate Chip Cookies

I am sure you have seen these things before, perhaps in your fruit basket or at the back of your freezer:

Don't pretend you don't recognize it, because I know you do. Elaine and I will throw a banana in the freezer and the first sign of trouble to "save for later" with the idea to "make something with it." We found no fewer than 5 black bananas in the freezer so I finally made something with them: Banana Chocolate Chip Cookies. I merged a couple of recipes together including one from allrecipes.com and the one from the back of the chocolate chip package.

Here is what you need:

2 1/2 cups AP flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 cup white sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

2/3 cup butter, softened

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup mashed banana (I used 4 bananas)

2 cups chocolate chunks

Here is what you do:

- Sift together flour, baking powder, salt and baking soda

- Cream together butter and sugars until light and fluffy then beat in eggs and vanilla extract.

- Add mashed bananas.

- Add the flour mixture and stir until just combined. Stir in chocolate chunks.

- Drop by spoonfuls (I used a little ice cream scoop) onto greased cookie sheets and bake at 400F for 12-15 minutes.

These are very cake-y and delicious and while I definitely tasted banana, some people said they couldn't tell until I mentioned it. I took 2 dozen to work and they didn't even last until noon.

Some other things I thought to add to these were peanut butter or peanut butter chips and I also thought of adding some oats.

There are 4 more over-ripe bananas in the fruit basket, so I'll get to try something else soon!