Banana Cookies and Flour Sacks

A wonderful thing happens when I start my Christmas baking: as soon as the smell of cookies begins to invade the house, the number of visitors to my kitchen begins to grow. The only problem with this is that the freshly baked cookies quickly begin to dwindle, and more often than not I find myself baking the same recipes over again closer to Christmas.

So, to encourage the visitors and still have enough cookies left for our gift baskets and Christmas dinner, I have resorted to baking a couple of batches of some quick drop cookie recipe to have on hand for these welcome visitors. Just add almond, lemon, or orange extract to pretty much any easy recipe, and you’ll have them fooled into thinking these are truly Christmas cookies. Today I had some very ripe bananas that needed to be used, so this is what I baked:

Banana Cookies
2/3 cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon your choice of almond, lemon, or orange extract
2 1/2 cups flour
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cup mashed bananas (about 3 small bananas)

Cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, and beat well after each addition. Add your choice of extract and mashed bananas.

Sift together flour, cornstarch, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add to mixture.

Drop by heaping teaspoons onto greased cookie sheets. Bake in a 400 degrees oven 10-12 minutes.

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The dough will be very fluffy and spongy. Don’t worry if it seems a little runny – the cornstarch is there to help with that.

This makes a large, very soft cookie:

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While I’m at it, I should share another fabric source at my disposal. One of the supermarkets where I shop gives you the option of purchasing flour in cotton bags, for a mere $0.20 more than in a plastic bag. A complete no-brainer, wouldn’t you say? True, the choice of fabrics isn’t always the greatest, but for a mere 20 cents I’m not one to complain. Well… I chose these over some Spiderman fabric…