Goin' Bananas

Good afternoon, dear Kitschies!  It's another beautiful day here in the Land of Enchantment and I'm stuck inside at work.  Not that I'm complaining about work...but it would be wonderful to be outside enjoying the gorgeous spring weather. 

At the Harmeyer homestead, we've been known to go through a bunch or two of bananas faster than they hit the table.  However, the last couple weeks it's been so busy we haven't been eating at home like we usually do.  The hubs noticed that we had a few bananas that were on their way out so he challenged me to find something to do with them.  Challenge accepted, I say.  Challenge accepted.  I didn't want to do the usual banana bread, so I hopped on Allrecipes and quickly found a recipe to try. 

Banana Drops
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
7/8 cup brown sugar
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 cup butter
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp banana extract
2 eggs
3 ripe bananas, mashed
1/3 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.

In a medium size mixing bowl, sift together flour, baking soda and salt. In a separate small bowl, combine 2 tablespoons brown sugar with cinnamon, set aside. 

In a medium size mixing bowl, beat together 3/4 cup brown sugar with the butter or margarine, vanilla and banana extract until the mixture is light in texture. Beat in the eggs. Mix in the banana. Slowly mix the flour mixture into the egg, banana and sugar mixture. Fold in nuts. Drop the dough by teaspoonful onto the prepared cookie sheet. Sprinkle the cookies with the mixture of brown sugar and cinnamon prepared earlier. 

Bake 8 to 10 minutes, until lightly browned.


NOTES:  I didn't have banana extract, but I did have banana liqueur; it worked perfectly.  And forget parchment paper!  I use my Silpat silicon baking mat that my cousins gave me for Christmas.

They don't look like much before they get all toasty warm in the oven, but trust me, they puff up perfectly.

Caught in the act!  Yeah, that's Mr Nate's hand.  "I just wanted to taste some of the sugar."  Nice.

Speaking of Mr Nate, I had a helper for this endeavor.  Nate always has so much fun helping me - pouring ingredients in the bowl, scraping the sides of the bowl.  Now if I could only get him to help me clean up the kitchen when we're finished!

I don't know what he was doing, but it looks like he was throwing gang signs.  *sigh*  That's my boy!

Here they are!  They were like little mini banana breads - not too sweet.  I forgot to mention that I didn't add any nuts.  I brought some of these to the office and they were GONE before I even got back to have one for myself.

What do *you* do with over-ripe bananas?  I'm on a constant search for the *perfect* banana bread. *hinthint*