Melt-in-Your-Mouth Banana Chocolate Chip Macadamia Cookies

This is the kind of joy that can result when you are scrambling to get rid of ingredients in your kitchen before moving.  I found about six kinds of gluten-free flours I need to get rid of, and in my freezer, five frozen, ripe bananas.  A chocolate bar.  Half of a bag of almond meal.  

A friend and I were chatting the other day about substitutions for butter in cookie recipes, and I told her about substituting banana in my oatmeal cookie recipe a few weeks ago.  We wondered if that same substitution could work for any cookie, or if the oats made it work with their bulkiness.

Well, it worked for this one.  It really worked.  I feel absolved of guilt as I indulge in these cookies.

They aren't the kind of cookies that retain their shape in the oven, even after I stuck the dough in the freezer for an hour.  They spread.  But they remain so chewy, so delicious, and so addictive after they come out of the oven that you won't mind. 

Banana Chocolate Chip Macadamia Cookies

1 cup mashed bananas (3 medium ripe bananas, mashed)
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg + 1 egg white
1 tsp vanilla extract OR 1 package vanilla sugar
½ tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp. baking powder
3 cups gluten-free flour (What I used:  ¾ cup millet flour, ¾ cup tapioca starch, ¼ cup potato starch, ¼ cup brown rice flour, ½ cup buckwheat flour, ½ cup sorghum flour)
½ cup shredded coconut
¾ cup almond meal
100 grams crushed macadamia nuts
1 chocolate bar, chopped or 1 ½ cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350 F.  Cream together the mashed bananas and sugars.  Add the egg plus the egg white and beat to mix well.  Add the vanilla/maple extract and stir well.  

In a small mixing bowl, mix together the flours, salt, baking powder, and baking soda.  Add them, little by little, to the wet ingredients, mixing well.  Add the coconut and almond meal and continue to stir. 

Crush the macadamia nuts into smaller pieces and add them, along with the chocolate chips (or chopped chocolate bar) to the dough.

Place the dough in the refrigerator for an hour or two, or in the freezer for 30 - 45 minutes.  Preheat the oven to 350 F and place about 1 tbsp. of dough on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.  These will spread a lot as they bake, so be conservative with the amount of dough you use for each cookie.  Bake for 10 - 14 minutes, or until the edges are just turning brown.  Remove from the oven and cool on a wire rack before serving.  They'll harden a bit as they cool, so it's ok (even desired) for them to look a little undercooked when they come out of the oven!