Made with toasty brown butter, pecans, and plenty of chocolate chips, my banana bread cookies are a fun, gourmet cookie version of the classic bread. Recipe includes a how-to video!
Banana Bread Cookies
The gourmet-cookie version of chocolate chip banana bread, these are the fancier, bakery-style sister to my banana cookies and everyone who has tried them has become obsessed.
These cookies are soft, tender, and, most of all, amazingly flavorful (thanks to banana and brown butter!). I’m asked often what I do with my leftover baked goods and my sister, (Nikki, she helps me in the kitchen) takes most of them to her soccer teams (she’s on 4 teams!) to share. I often use their reaction as a gauge for the success of a recipe. These cookies were a hit and were quickly devoured, and I think/hope you will all love them just as much!
Why You’ll Love This Recipe
- No chilling! Alright, technically there’s no chilling. You do need to let the brown butter cool down, but the dough won’t need an extra stint in the fridge like is required for my brown butter chocolate chip cookies.
- Gourmet, larger than life appearance. These are simply irresistible and belong right up there beside my thick chocolate chip cookies. These are definitely cookies you’d see in a bakery display case!
- Actually tastes like banana bread. Toasting the nuts and butter, using real bananas, and adding just a pinch of cinnamon really makes the flavor come through (but at the same time, the texture isn’t too cakey, it feels like a cookie!)
- No mixer needed! Since we are starting with melted butter. And if you use a scale to measure your ingredients, you won’t even need to dirty measuring cups. I’m all for saving dishes! 😉
What You Need
You don’t need too many ingredients for this recipe, and luckily most will already be in your pantry.
- Bananas. The riper the better, just like when making banana muffins or banana coffee cake. I typically make these cookies when I have a few lone spotty bananas sitting on the counter. Note that overripe, mushy bananas are the most flavorful and are sweeter (and have more sugar) than their yellow-er counterparts. If your bananas aren’t ripe enough, your cookies won’t be as flavorful and may not even spread as much. Would this stop me from making them if I only had fresh bananas? Not at all, but I do want to temper your expectations!
- Pecans. Coarsely chop these before you add them to the brown butter. You could alternatively use walnuts, if you prefer those! If you want to leave the nuts out entirely that’s fine, but note the cookies may spread more (in which case you can chill the dough for a bit).
- Cinnamon. Cinnamon adds a super subtle warm flavor. I go light on it here, so it’s super subtle. You can omit if you prefer. Alternatively, if you prefer more cinnamon flavor, feel free to increase the cinnamon to a teaspoon or even more.
- Egg yolks. We’ll leave out the egg whites and use just the yolks in this recipe, since we already have extra water in the dough from the bananas (another reason we use brown butter!). If you don’t want to toss your whites, use them for coconut macaroons, chocolate meringues, or a double batch of candied pecans (great for gifting!).
- Chocolate chips. I use mini and regular semisweet chocolate chips, but you can use all of one size. Milk chocolate chips or even peanut butter chips would work just fine here, too, but will obviously change the flavor slightly. See the FAQ section below if you want to make these banana bread cookies without chocolate chips.
SAM’S TIP: A sprinkle of coarse granulated sugar on top of the cookies is so pretty and lends a bakery-style banana bread feel. I’m using the same sugar I recently shared in my sourdough chocolate chip muffins and linked to it below in case you want to try it too (but plain old granulated will work in a pinch!).
This is just an overview of the ingredients I used and why. For the full recipe please scroll down to the bottom of the post!
How to Make Banana Bread Cookies
Brown the butter + toast the nuts
Cook the butter and pecans in a saucepan over medium-low heat until the butter has browned and the nuts are toasted. The butter will foam, pop, and sizzle quite a bit during this process; just keep stirring and looking for clues that it is done (nutty aroma and brown bits on the bottom of the pan).
Now, I like to brown the butter and toast the nuts together, 2 birds, 1 stone and all that. However, it is slightly more of an advanced skill than simply browning butter, so feel free to toast the pecans separately and then brown the butter, then combine the two instead.
When your butter is browned (and the nuts toasted), pour it into a large heatproof bowl to cool. You can speed this up by placing the bowl in the fridge, if you’d like, but don’t let the butter re-solidify.
Make the dough
Whisk the dry ingredients together in a new bowl while the butter cools and set aside. Once the butter is cooled (or at least mostly cooled/just barely warm), mash the banana into the cooled butter and nuts. Double-check that the butter mixture doesn’t feel too warm, then add in the sugars, egg yolks, and vanilla and stir until everything is well combined, then gradually add the flour mixture.
Add the chocolate
Fold in the chocolate chips until they are well incorporated and you have a cohesive dough.
Scoop and bake
Scoop dough into ¼ cup/95 gram portions (yesss, these are big ones!) and place on parchment lined baking sheets. Bake until the edges start to turn light golden brown and let cool completely before removing from the baking sheet.
SAM’S TIP: Like many of my cookie recipes, we will slightly underbake these cookies in the oven and let them cool completely on their baking sheets. This allows them to finish cooking outside the oven for perfectly soft and chewy results! Note that if you break into them while they’re still warm, they’ll seem slightly underdone at the centers, so let them cool completely.
FAQs
I suppose you don’t have to add them, but your cookies will be less sweet (and not quite as fun!). You could always add more nuts (see note below) or just leave the recipe as is–no changes are required if you do this.
I haven’t tried this myself, but I don’t anticipate any issues in doing so! I have a whole post on how to freeze cookie dough that will tell you exactly how to do this.
If your bananas aren’t quite ripe or if you use more pecans than called for, your dough will be stiffer and won’t spread quite as much as it should. This can also happen if you over-measure your flour, which is easy to do if you aren’t measuring with cups (and why I always recommend you use a kitchen scale!).
Just like my brown sugar pop tart cookies and blueberry muffin cookies, this is another gourmet cookie that nobody asked for but that I just had so much fun developing and being creative with anyway. I sincerely hope you love it as much as I do (let me know either way!).
Enjoy! -Sam
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Chocolate Chip Banana Bread Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 cup (226 g) unsalted butter
- 1 cup (170 g) coarsely chopped pecans
- 3 ¾ cups (470 g) all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon table salt
- ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon see note
- ⅔ cup (170 g) mashed banana
- 1 cup (200 g) granulated sugar
- ⅔ cup (166 g) light brown sugar firmly packed
- 2 large egg yolks
- 1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
- 2 cups (340 g) chocolate chips (use your favorite variety – I use a mix of miniature and regular-sized semisweet)
- Coarse granulated sugar for sprinkling on top (optional, click the link for the one I use)
Recommended Equipment
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350F (175C) and line several baking sheets with parchment paper. Set aside.
- Add butter and pecans to a medium-sized skillet over medium-low heat. Cook, stirring constantly, until butter is completely melted. Continue to stir constantly as butter sizzles, pops, and foams. Cook until butter is browned (it will likely still be foamy but you’ll likely be able to smell the toasty aroma of browned butter and the sizzling and popping will slow/stop).1 cup (226 g) unsalted butter, 1 cup (170 g) coarsely chopped pecans
- Pour the butter and nuts into a large heatproof bowl and set aside (I usually place in the refrigerator to speed up the cooling process, you don’t want the butter to be cold). Allow butter to cool before proceeding.
- In a separate, medium-sized mixing bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. Set aside.3 ¾ cups (470 g) all-purpose flour, 1 teaspoon baking soda, ½ teaspoon baking powder, 1 teaspoon table salt, ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- Mash your banana in a large mixing bowl. (Carefully) add the cooled browned butter and nuts and stir until well-combined.⅔ cup (170 g) mashed banana
- Add sugars and stir well.1 cup (200 g) granulated sugar, ⅔ cup (166 g) light brown sugar
- Add egg yolks and vanilla extract and stir until well combined.2 large egg yolks, 1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
- Gradually add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients and stir until combined.
- Add chocolate chips and stir until well incorporated.2 cups (340 g) chocolate chips
- Scoop dough by large, ¼-cup (95g) scoops (if you want to make the cookies smaller that’s fine, just bake for less time!) and drop on baking sheet, spacing cookies at least 2” apart.
- Sprinkle cookies with coarse sugar then transfer to center rack of 350F (175C) oven and bake for 13-15 minutes, until edges are light golden brown.Coarse granulated sugar
- Allow cookies to cool completely on baking sheet before enjoying.
Notes
Banana note
The riper your bananas are, the better, more flavorful, and sweeter your cookies will be. However the bananas will also affect the consistency of the dough. If yours aren’t overripe the dough will be more dry and the cookies less prone to spreading.Cinnamon
This is a very small and subtle bit of cinnamon that I think adds just the right touch. You can omit it if you don’t like cinnamon, or conversely add more if you like the flavor.Sugar for sprinkling
I love using this coarse bakery-style sugar but if you can’t find it a light sprinkling of turbinado sugar or even just regular granulated sugar will work.Nutrition
Nutritional information is based on third-party calculations and should be considered an estimate only. Actual nutritional content will vary based upon brands used, measuring methods, cooking method, portion sizes, and more.
Maggie Smith
Hi Sam, do you think these would work as a bar cookie in, say in a 9X13?
Sam Merritt
Hi Maggie! I haven’t tried it, but I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t work. I’m not sure on a bake time. 🙂