Banana Date Drop Cookies

It was cold. It was raining. My daughter was bored. We baked. I had this recipe from a long time ago and found it today in my recipe stash. Super easy, healthy and quick to make. This recipe would be great to use for teaching little kids to mix things together and cook, but my 16 year old daughter had just as much fun. Her favorite part? Smashing the bananas using the potato masher. My favorite part? Watching her completely devour an entire plate full of these scrumptious cookies. (but of course she wouldn’t let me take a picture of her)

Banana-Date Drop Cookies
Makes 2-3 dozen

6 large smashed bananas
2/3 c. vegetable oil
4 cups oatmeal
2 cups dates (you could substitute raisins or cranberries)
A couple dashes of salt
½ cup of mini chocolate chips

Grease 2 cookie sheets
Mix ingredients all together in large bowl
Drop cookies by teaspoon or tablespoon onto cookie sheets and bake at 350 degrees for 25 min. or until tops of cookies are slightly light brown.

Enjoy!!

I Should Have Vacuumed Instead

Not bragging, but it's not often I have a disaster in the kitchen. I usually can salvage the dish, no matter what. But baking is sorta foreign to me and I was craving cookies. Inspired by this, I set off to the store to find my ingredients to bake cookies from scratch. Well, I only needed the chips because I had everything else. I was just asking for one little thing. But of course that was not to be. All I could find was the regular semi-sweet or milk chocolate chips. To me that wasn't enough. I like gooey. I also like raisins or berries, but the family isn't into it. So mini -marshmallows would have to do.

I went home and used the recipe from the back of the Hershey's chocolate chips that I bought. I added the mini-marshmallows at the end and as I mixed them, it hit me. This wasn't going to work but it was too late. It was going to be a mess as I was thinking of the 100's of times I made Rice Crispy treats. I checked the time to bake and I opted for 8 min. Maybe the marshmallows would just get soft in 8 min. I made a batch. Wrong-O. I got them out and it was a sheet of cookie dough and marshmallow spread all over the cookie sheet. Great. I waited for it to cool and chipped it off the tray in little chunks. My daughter said to save it because it would be good on ice cream.

Alrighty, attempt #2. I had the remainder of the batter and I sprayed a baking pan with PAM and spread the dough in the pan. A thick cookie, pan cookie, cookie-cake, whatever you want to call it. I cooked it. And you know what. I really thought it turned out. I cooled it and you know what? It didn't. Because there were so many marshmallows in there (I think I used a large 16 oz bag), it was mush. Eat with a spoon or fork mush. But it taste good. Problem is, I promised my neighbor some cookies. Now what do I tell him? "I suck at baking and wouldn't want you to laugh, so you're going to have to wait until my next batch"? I believe that to be so. And how often do I bake? About 2 times/year.

I think I may be turning into my friend Julie and her many tales of Bad Home Cooking.

Cupcake Rings

It's just better this way. I continue to take the 'no calorie' approach to cupcakes. As mentioned before there are earrings now at the website. In addition, here are some adjustable rings to match, or not.

Seems that I have detoured far from my usual style/styles of jewelry. In my low tech form of research I have found that there are many cupcake obsessed people out there besides me. The difference is that I can't bake well. But I can bake these. They turn out with no burned edged, consistent from one to the next, and again, no calories.