It seems to be that time of year where every couple of weeks there are two or three really sad-looking bananas left on the counter. I often peel, bag and freeze them for future use, but since I’d done that just a week ago, I decided I needed another solution for the ones left on the counter.

My husband and I both love banana bread, but I was itching for something a little different, something that didn’t need to be sliced and that wouldn’t leave crumbs everywhere. So I settled on a recipe from allrecipes.com for Banana Cake Cookies. The recipe even includes a frosting, but I had some ready-made cookie frosting on hand, so I used that. If you want the scratch-made frosting follow the link.

Now for some reason by the time I got around to taking the picture, after I had put the cookies in a Tupperware to keep them away from our doggie, the frosting started to melt off even though it was completely solid when I put the cookies in the container. They still tasted as good, but weren’t quite as pretty, sorry.

Maybe I’ll do something different in terms of the frosting, or just dust with icing sugar next time, which will be soon since there’s a couple more bananas that have already turned brown.

Here’s my version of the recipe, with very few modifications.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 eggs
1 cup mashed bananas (about three ripe bananas)
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 cup chopped pecans

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350F.

In a bowl, mix butter and brown sugar until creamy. Add eggs and banana and mix until well combined.

Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cloves then add to wet mixture and beat well.

Add pecans and stir until just combined. Place by heaping tablespoonful on parchment-lined baking sheets, about two inches apart.

Bake for 12 minutes and then cool on rack.