Much to my husbands chagrin, I have a ridiculous love of cookbooks and therefore, said cookbooks find themselves all over the house. I read them as though they were novels…cover.to.cover. One of my favorite things to do once everyone has gone to bed is to grab one of my cookbooks, my trusty notebook and pen, a glass of ice-cold milk, some sticker tabs and pick out all of the recipes I can’t wait to try. A few nights ago, while doing just that, I came across a recipe for a cookie that looked so tasty and had me wishing I had one to with my glass of milk! While I normally just skip right over anything in the “baking” or desserts section, I tabbed it, made a mental note and went to bed.
A couple of days later, my kids asked if we could bake some cookies…why yes, yes we can! (And I know just the recipe!!) I should say that baking cookies in my house usually consists of my preheating the oven while my nuggets separate the nestle tollhouse premade dough onto the baking sheet. Not this time! It’s a lazy summer day, so let’s make those cookies the old fashioned way – from scratch!
I looked in the fridge and pantry and we had all of the ingredients we needed except one…corn flakes, so after a quick trip to the grocery store, we were ready to bake! Cornflakes in a cookie you say?! Well let me tell you, they are yummy – and BONUS, considering I got them from a cookbook titled, “Cook Yourself Sexy”, you won’t feel at all guilty about reaching for another…and another.
First things first, while the oven is preheating to 350, let’s get all of the ingredients ready! Bananas, Butter, Brown Sugar, Vanilla Extract, Eggs, Flour, Baking Soda, Baking Powder, Salt, Ground Cinnamon, Chocolate Chips, Cornflakes and Shredded Sweetened Coconut.
Did I mention this was a perfect recipe to make with your kids ;o) For the bananas, I just cut them up on a paper plate, handed my son a fork and let him start a’mashin’!! My daughter LOVES cracking eggs and seeing if she can get them in without any shells – so two jobs down!
There’s a good reason that I don’t normally bake. For one thing, all those steps! This recipe calls for “gently sifting all of the dry ingredients”. I was TOTALLY going to skip that part and just dump it all in a bowl, when my daughter announced (as she was reading the directions), “Mommy, how do you sift?!” So after a brief description, Alexis and Grant took turns sifting those dry ingredients. They loved that part! “It looks just like snow!” Done and done!
Three jobs down…all that’s left now is a little mixing, some stirring and…..
…into the preheated oven they go! So here’s my little baking tip…since you want the cookies to come out relatively uniform and baked at the same rate, you really want to measure out the scoops, and there isn’t an easier way to do this than with a mini ice-cream scooper. I LOVE mine, and use it for everything from meatballs to …cookies!
All in all, it really was a pretty easy recipe, and they turned out delicious! The one thing I will say is you really want to watch them when they are in the oven. The recipe says to bake for 12 to 15 minutes, but mine baked up in about 10. I’m sure it’s because I used my convection setting, but still, keep your eye on them. I let them cool on the baking sheet for about a minute, then transferred them to a wire rack to cool completely.
So tonight, when everyone goes to bed and I sneak out of bed to read one of my cookbooks, I’ll have a little treat to go with my ice-cold glass of milk!!! Enjoy!
Cornflake-Chocolate Chip Cookies
(Original recipe by Candice Kumai, Cook Yourself Sexy. I will put her ingredients up, and just make my notes beside. Great cookbook by the way! Some of my favorite go-to recipes!)
3 TBS butter at room temperature
½ C mashed banana (*I only used one ripe, mashed up banana ‘cause that’s what I had)
1 C packed brown sugar (* I packed mine like crazy and added a sprinkle more)
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
2 eggs
1 C All-Purpose Flour
1 tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp Baking Powder
½ tsp sea salt (* I used kosher salt and only used about ¼ tsp)
½ tsp Ground Cinnamon (* We love cinnamon, so I used a HEALTHY ½ tsp…like closer to ¾ tsp)
1 C semi-sweet Chocolate Chips
3 C cornflakes, crushed (* I think it was just over 4 ½ C before crushing, but the kids started crushing the heck out of it before I could see)
2 TBS shredded sweetened Coconut (* I used a little more than that because we love coconut – closer to 3 TBS)
Preheat your oven to 350 and line a baking sheet with foil (I LOVE using the non-stick foil, so I didn’t have to grease anything!) If you’re using regular tin foil, you might want to give it a spritz with cooking spray.
Whisk together the butter, mashed banana, brown sugar and vanilla – I just threw it all in my mixer and let it go to work!
Sift the flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon and salt into a bowl, and add the dry mixture to the wet ingredients in the mixer, scraping down the sides as needed.
Next add the chocolate chips, cornflakes and coconut, then fold it all in until it’s well incorporated with the batter. It will look totally bumpy and that’s great!
Using a small ice-cream scoop, place the cookies on the baking sheet, leaving about 1 ½ “ between the cookies.
Bake for 10-15 minutes. It took me two batches, and the cookbook recommends refrigerating the remaining dough while you bade the first batch, so I did that (see, I can follow directions ;o) Repeat with the second batch.
My kids LOVED these cookies! I thought they were great because they weren’t overly sweet, and tasted very wholesome (granola-esque, if you will), which I really like in a cookie ;o) I think I’ll have another one right now!!
*** The author of the cookbook had a note under the recipe that said, “I don’t recommend that you store this dough overnight, since the cornflakes with get mushy. If you need to store it for the next day, simply add the cornflakes just before baking.”
