Gluten Free Chocolate Chunk Banana Cookies

Soft and chewy Gluten Free Chocolate Chunk Banana Cookies have just the right amount of banana flavor, reminiscent of your favorite homemade banana bread.

Well one thing that I learned how to do this summer was roast (toast?) s’mores, that’s for sure. It’s a learned skill indeed.

You know what else I learned to do this summer??? How to SHOP for s’mores.

You wouldn’t think that was a necessarily difficult skill, yet there is a science and an art to it, which apparently I had not yet learned. What an atrocity that my parents have never taught me correctly!

My parents recently built an amazing backyard complete with a spacious deck, a patio, a waterfall, and a natural stone fire pit. To say it’s PARADISE back there would be an understatement.

So with all the excitement surrounding this entirely remodeled backyard, and the accompaniment of the soothing summer nights in Utah, there was absolutely no reason not to sit on the patio and make s’mores every night.

And indeed we did…for the first FOUR nights in a row!

I was in charge of picking up the ingredients for our very first evening of s’moring. My mom sent me with a simple grocery list; Hershey’s milk chocolate bars, graham crackers, and marshmallows. Simple.

Simple enough for anyone else but me. I got to the candy isle and just couldn’t decide whether to buy individual regular sized Hershey’s bars, regular sized bars in a pack, mini Hershey’s bars, funsize bars, king sized, ORRRR the ultra mega giant sized Hershey bars.

Most people would buy the typical regular sized bars, but me and my penny pinching ways decided to go with the megatron bar. I was proud of myself because I saved my mom a whopping 2 cents per ounce, for a total of maybe $1 between the two bars.

Long story short, the giant sized Hershey’s bars are apparently too thick to make the perfect s’more…at least in the eyes of a perfectionist: aka my mom. Let’s just say there were two trips made to the grocery store that evening for the “right” ingredients.

And so what do you do with two huge bars of milk chocolate??? Chop them up and put them in EVERYTHING!

Which, of course, is exactly what I did for the next week starting with these Gluten Free Chocolate Chunk Banana Cookies.

So I won’t take too long explaining how wonderful these cookies are since I wasted an entire 5 minutes of your life outlining how I ended up with chocolate chunks.

All you really care about is these just taste GOOD right?

Well they do.

Really good.

They are in no way cakey or puffy like most banana, applesauce, or pumpkin cookies usually are. They are CHEWY. Just like your most favorite chewy chocolate chip cookies ever.

Except they taste like banana bread. A chewy cookie with all that homemade cinnamon-y banana-y flavor of your most favorite loaf of banana bread.

Really, the flavor of these cookies is just killer. No other word to describe it.

But wait! Remember those chocolate bars??? Yeah, I chopped an entire one up and threw those sinful milk chocolatey chunks right into the cookie dough.

Oh YEAH!

I shared these cookies with all kinds of friends and family and they all gave rave reviews. Plus they freeze really well so you can keep a few fresh out of the oven and freeze the rest for those days you need a little pick me up. As in a “give me some sugar” kind of pick me up.

I really do think you guys will go ape over these. Haha! APE over BANANA cookies??? Hehe, I’m good.

What is your favorite chocolate chunk dessert?

Gluten Free Chocolate Chunk Banana Cookies

 

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Prep time

15 mins

Cook time

11 mins

Total time

26 mins

 

Soft and chewy Gluten Free Chocolate Chunk Banana Cookies have just the right amount of banana flavor, reminiscent of your favorite homemade banana bread.

Author: Brielle

Recipe type: Dessert

Serves: 40 cookies

Ingredients

• 6 tablespoons butter, room temperature
• ½ cup shortening
• ¾ cup granulated sugar
• ¾ cup dark brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• ⅓ cup mashed banana (about 1 small-medium sized)
• 1 cup brown rice flour
• ⅓ cup coconut flour
• ½ cup potato starch
• ⅓ cup arrowroot or tapioca starch
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• ¾ teaspoon salt
• ½ teaspoon xanthan gum

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line baking sheets with parchment paper. Set aside.
2. In a large mixing bowl or stand mixer, cream together butter, shortening, granulated sugar, dark brown sugar and egg until smooth. Add vanilla and mashed banana and mix on low until incorporated, scraping down the sides as needed.
3. In a smaller mixing bowl sift together brown rice flour, coconut flour, potato starch, arrowroot starch, baking soda, salt, and xanthan gum.
4. Add dry ingredients to wet and mix on medium speed until well incorporated, scraping the sides and bottom of the bowl.
5. Roughly chop a giant sized Hershey’s bar into chunks to equal 1 ½ cups. Add chocolate to dough and mix on low speed until evenly distributed.
6. Let dough sit for five minutes. Mix on low for an additional 30 seconds. Scoop walnut sized balls of dough 2” apart on cookie sheets. Bake at 350 degrees, one pan at a time, for 11-13 minutes or until browning on edges.
7. Remove cookies from oven and slide parchment paper with cookies on top onto cooling racks. Allow to cool for 5-10 minutes before removing from parchment paper with spatula.
8. Store cookies in an airtight container for 3 days at room temperature or for up to 3 months in freezer.

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