Banana, caramel and date cookies

We are back people!!

Yeah, all has been quiet for some time in the cooking area. I was on vacay with the fam fam in sunny Orlando Florida.

It was exhausting to say the least... (park after park... and 12 hour difference in time doing havoc on my internal clock.-- waking up at 3, 4am)

So, after a week recovery, I FINALLY was able to cook. A friend went to PARIS (PAREE) and ate a lot of french maracons. (LADUREE). She came back and gave me a cookbook (she was planning of letting me taste the maracons but she got back earlier and it did not reach me... =(()

Anyhow...

Here's one of the recipes from the cookbook she gave me: Ok, I know we REALLY like bananas. I also had the ingredients ready and it was an easy recipe.

You'll need:


125g (1/2 cup) butter softened
1 cup (220g) firmly packed brown sugar
1 egg yolk
1/2 cup (100g) mashed banana
2 cups all purpose flour sifted
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup chopped dried dates
Caramels (quartered)

Preheat oven to 180c. Line baking pan

Beat butter, sugar and egg yolk in a small bowl with electric mixer until combined. Stir in banana, sifted flour, baking soda and dates.

Roll tablespoons of mixture in balls and push a pc of caramel in the middle. -- for this I used a small ice cream scooper and pushed the caramel inside before scooping it on the baking sheet.. you can use spoons too if you don't have an ice cream scooper.

Place balls 2 inches apart on baking trays and bake 20 mins.

I bought the caramels in LANDMARK supermarket. (in case you were wondering where I got them) I also quartered them instead of halving them- as per original recipe. I was afraid they would be too big for my small cookie)

The cookies turned out great. They smelled really banana-ey. - like banana bread but in cookie form. I would still have to wait for other opinions on the taste though. But of you like bananas, this one is a keeper for sure!!