Brown Butter Banana Bread Chocolate Chip Cookies

Luscious, gooey-in-the-middle brown butter chocolate chip cookies with a banana twist, making them taste like a combination of your favorite chocolate chip cookie and a slice of freshly baked, still-warm banana bread. It’s the perfect recipe to use up that sad single banana languishing on the countertop (you only need a single egg yolk too!)

With a deep and nutty flavor from the brown butter, a hearty kick of banana flavor, and studded with a mix of semisweet and dark chocolate pieces that melt into luscious puddles of molten chocolate in the oven, these lengthily-named cookies will become a fast favorite.

So we’ve done BBCCCs (brown butter chocolate chip cookies), but what about BBBBCCCs (brown butter BANANA BREAD chocolate chip cookies)? Indeed, adding a banana to my favorite cookie recipe makes for a cookie that tastes like a perfect mashup between chocolate chip cookies and banana bread.

The idea for this recipe came about when Taylor — who has a banana every morning for breakfast — somehow wound up with an extra banana that quickly turned (let’s just say he likes his bananas medium rare, even a speck of brown and he won’t touch it). I couldn’t very well let that sad, lonely banana go to waste, but given that it was just a single banana, it wasn’t quite enough to make a loaf of banana bread or even my banana bread muffins, at least without more math than my morning brain was willing to do.

But I figured banana cookies sounded pretty good, so why not?

Turns out you can’t just go adding banana to cookie recipes willy-nilly though. Since bananas have a high water content, simply adding banana will lead to puffy, cakey cookies. And I, for one, am not a fan of cakey cookies (whoopie pies being the one and only exception).

To make up for the extra water content, I removed the whole egg, leaving just egg yolk, and removed the splash of milk as well (the banana more than makes up for the water lost while browning the butter, which is why the milk is there to begin with). A single egg yolk combined with the equivalent of one small banana is enough to give these cookies a fudgy, toothsome, and borderline-gooey texture that is anything but cakey.

One unintended — but not unappreciated — side effect of adding the banana? The extra moisture makes these cookies last way longer. I found them just as soft and decadent after a week stored in an airtight container. Which is 3 or 4 days longer than a normal chocolate chip cookie will last in similar conditions. Although they are so good that chances are they won’t last long enough for you to test this theory for yourself (unless of course you made a double batch, which I highly recommend).

For even longer storage, they also freeze beautifully, and somehow manage to get even chewier and fudgier after freezing. I like to wrap them in pairs, stacked back to back and wrapped with plastic wrap, then bag them all in a ziptop bag labeled with the kind and date. When you want to enjoy one (or two), just take one of the wrapped pairs out of the freezer, let it come to room temperature for 15 or 20 minutes (the hardest part to be honest), and then enjoy!

If you prefer to freeze unbaked cookie dough balls and bake them fresh from scratch, I recommend reducing the oven temperature to 325ºF and baking for 15-17 minutes. The slightly lower temperature will allow the cookies to bake more evenly when the dough is still frozen.

Scoop there it is.

I opted to scoop these cookies into generous 60 gram balls by using a large (#20) cookie scoop with the dough leveled against the side of the bowl (not a heaping scoop). If you’d prefer extra large cookies, you can smash two scoops together and make 100 gram balls if you prefer (increase baking time to 15-16 minutes instead).

When I’m scooping, I place my dough bowl on a digital scale and tare it to 0. Then when I scoop, the scale will show exactly how many grams of dough I’ve scooped (if it shows -61, that means I just scooped 61 grams of dough which is the perfect size for these particular cookies). Tare it again between each scoop if you’d rather not do head math.

Combine butter and milk powder in a small, light-colored saucepan over medium heat. Continue to cook, stirring regularly, until the milk solids start to turn a light golden brown. Transfer brown butter to a mixing bowl and allow to cool slightly. Add sugar and brown sugar and mix until evenly moistened. Separate one egg; save the white to use for something else. Add egg yolk to cooled butter and sugar mixture, mix well to combine. Mash ripe banana until smooth and mostly lump-free. Measure out 1/3 cup of banana and discard the rest. Add banana to mixing bowl with other ingredients and mix to combine. Add vanilla, either 1 teaspoon extract or 1/2 teaspoon vanilla bean paste. Add dry ingredients (flour, baking soda/powder, salt, and espresso powder) and mix until no streaks of dry flour remains. Add chocolate chips (I used a mix of semisweet and dark chocolates). Stir until chips are evenly distributed, then cover and refrigerate for 15 to 20 minutes to allow dough to firm up slightly. Use a large cookie scoop to make 60g dough balls; I like to put my bowl on a digital scale to ensure all my cookies are exactly the same size. Drop dough balls onto parchment-lined baking sheets, leaving 2-3 inches of space between them to allow for spread. After baking, swirl a cookie cutter around the outside of the still-hot cookies to make perfect circles; you can also place a few chocolate chips on top if you want.

Picture Perfect Cookies.

As with most of my cookie recipes, swirl a large (3.5″ or so) round cookie cutter around the outsides of the cookies immediately after you take the cookies out of the oven. This tucks in the uneven edges and makes for perfectly round cookies. It’s my favorite trick for professional looking cookies that I will always take the time to do. But you have to do it right away, as once the cookies have cooled for more than 30 seconds or so they won’t reshape very easily.

You can also place a few chocolate chips on top of the cookies while they are still hot; they’ll melt and soften on top, making for truly picture perfect cookies. (I often place these extra chips on the dough balls before baking, but for these particular cookies I felt it worked better and looked nicer if I put the chips on afterwords.)

I don’t know why these before and afters are always so satisfying to me. It’s amazing what 11 minutes at 350 degrees can do!

These cookies do spread quite a bit, so give them plenty of space on your cookie sheets. I baked 6 per sheet but you could probably squeeze in 8 or 9; trying to get all 12 on one sheet might be pushing it a bit though, but hey, you do you.

Cookie Troubleshooting

The main issue people run into with cookies is spread: either spreading too much, or not spreading enough. It’s a fine line between the two and much of it depends on your setup and surroundings (the cookie sheets you use, or if your oven runs hot or cold, for example).

If your cookies spread too much… try chilling your batter a little bit longer. You can also bump up your oven temperature by 10 or 20 degrees (reduce bake time by a minute or two), as a higher oven temperature will often result in taller cookies.

Remember too that the cookie cutter swirl trick I mentioned above does wonders to save spread-out cookies! It tucks in even the wonkiest edges and makes for perfect looking cookies nearly every time.

If your cookies don’t spread enough… meaning they stay in mounds or balls instead of flattening out, you most likely over-measured your flour. That’s probably the case 90% of the time when someone says their cookies didn’t spread as much as mine. Using a scale for flour is key if you want to follow my recipes exactly. Even a tablespoon or two of extra flour — which can easily happen if you scoop your flour directly from the bag into cups — can make the difference between cookies shaped like soft mounds and cookies shaped like mountainous peaks.

Obviously you can’t take flour OUT of the dough after it’s been mixed, but if you bake a few test cookies and find they’re not spreading enough, try lowering your oven temperature 25 degrees and bake for 2-4 minutes longer. You can also slightly flatten your dough balls before baking, just press lightly with your palm to make somewhat of a puck shape. This will remove the ‘peak’ from the dough and help them spread more evenly.

Reduced sugar can also affect spread, making for more ball-like cookies. Sugar does much more than just add sweetness, it also contributes to spread and moisture, texture, and shelf life of the cookie as well.

Ingredient Notes & Substitutions

European-style salted butter: While I usually bake with standard unsalted butter, when I’m browning my butter I prefer the good stuff. I really do think you can taste a difference between regular and European-style butter, but this recipe should will still work with American-style butter too.

If using unsalted butter, increase the salt to 3/4 teaspoon.

Dry milk powder: Adding a few teaspoons of milk powder to the butter makes for even more toasty brown bits (aka what makes the brown butter magical), resulting in a more nutty, brown butter flavor in the final cookies. That said, your cookies will turn out just fine without this so I’ve noted it as optional in the final recipe.

Brown sugar: While I used dark brown sugar in my original brown butter cookie recipe, here I thought it made the cookies too dark, since the banana also increases browning. I liked the look and flavor of the light brown sugar better here, but either will technically work.

Banana: You only need one small, very ripe banana for this recipe. Measure out 1/3 cup (85 grams) of mashed banana and discard the rest (using more banana than that may result in a cakier cookie).

How ripe is very ripe? Well, if your banana is still mostly yellow, it’s not ripe enough. There should be more brown than yellow on that thing.

If your bananas aren’t quite ripe enough and you want to speed up the process, simply bake unpeeled bananas at 300ºF for 15 to 20 minutes or until skins are fully brown (they might seep a little liquid, that’s ok). Let cool completely, then peel and mash and proceed as instructed.

Instant espresso powder: I promise you can’t actually taste an obvious coffee flavor in the final cookie, but it does deepen the brown butter and chocolate flavor. Note instant espresso powder is not the same as espresso-ground coffee (which would make the cookies gritty). Instant coffee powder would be the closest replacement, but it’s not as strong as instant espresso powder. You can omit this if you like, but it really makes for wonderful cookies!

Chocolate Chips: I used a mix of chocolate chips here, some semisweet (50-60%) chips and some dark (72% chips) from Trader Joe’s. Using chopped chocolate or chocolate coverture instead of typical baking chips will lead to more melty puddles and slightly more spread than baking chips (which usually hold their shape in the oven).

Placing a few chocolate chips on top of the cookies immediately upon removing them from the oven makes for picture perfect puddles on top.