Oatmeal and Chocolate Chip Banana Bread Cookies

I'm truly at a loss for words. Banana bread meets oatmeal cookie meets chocolate chips?? These are the best cookies I have ever made and believe it or not, I actually guessed the amounts of each ingredient as opposed to using another cookie recipe as a base and it freaking worked. That almost never happens when I try and bake!! Ah! My very own and first ever original FOJ cookie recipe!

FYI, this recipe made 16 cookies. You'll want to pay close attention to the consistency of your finished dough since it's super hard to measure flour properly for baking without weighing it. Since baking measurements are way more sensitive than cooking measurements, I bet even the size of the banana you use compared to the one I used could make a difference in the texture! The finished cookie dough should be firm enough to hold a somewhat of scoop shape and def shouldn't start spreading out onto the cookie sheet before baking. If your dough is too wet and looks like pancake batter, I would add in flour, 1 teaspoon at a time and then mix it in until it seems thick enough to scoop. Also, throwing the dough into the fridge for twenty minutes helps to make things more solid for scooping as well.

If you're one of those people (guilty!) that skip through the beginning text of a recipe here's what you need to know before making these: have 1/4 cup of extra flour handy to add to the dough if you need to. Sometimes, the size of the banana you use can throw things off and the dough will need more flour to prevent flat and completely melted cookies from coming out of the oven.

What you need:

• 1 cup oat flour
• 1/4 cup oats
• 1 cup AP or GF flour (an additional 1/4 cup flour might be needed - see the bold note above.)
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon 
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tbsp cornstarch 
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 mashed banana (must be ripe)
• 1 egg
• 1 stick melted butter
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tbsp vanilla extract
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup cane or regular sugar
• 3/4 cup semi-sweet or dark chocolate chips or chunks

What to do:

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F and set out a cookie sheet and a piece of parchment paper.
2. Combine the oat flour, oats, all purpose or gluten free flour, cinnamon, baking soda, cornstarch and salt in a large bowl.
3. In a separate bowl, mash the banana and mix in the egg, butter, olive oil, vanilla extract, and both sugars.
4. Slowly add in the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and then mix in the chocolate chips. If the dough looks more like cake batter than cookie dough here, add in that additional 1/4 cup of flour.
5. Refrigerate the dough for at least 2 hours before baking. (You can skip this step but your cookies will be more flat than fluffy.)
6. I used an ice cream scooper to place each cookie dough ball onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. (Pro tip - spray the ice cream scooper with pam and add a few chocolate chips into it before scooping the dough to ensure they get to be on top of the cookie, prettier that way!!
7. Bake for 11-13 minutes. (I did 11 mins bc I prefer more undercooked cookies.) They won't look done in the center but that's where the gooey part comes in once they take their final form while cooling off. The edges of the cookie should be more firm than the center.
8. Smack the cookie sheet against the counter top gently in order to create that wrinkled-cookie texture on top of your cookies and let them set and cool for 15 minutes before eating.