Banana Pecan Cookies with Caramel Chips

This is one of the easier cookie recipes that are packed with flavor but really do not take a ton of work to make. Banana, caramel, and pecans are used together to make cakes, pies, tarts, and sauces, just to name a few.

I changed it up by adding the sea salt instead of the kosher salt just to give it one more flavor. Of course, the pecans give that wonderful buttery nuttiness to the cookies.

Ingredients

• Butter unsalted
• Light brown sugar
• Sugar white 
• Bananas
• Sour cream
• Egg
• Vanilla Extract
• All-purpose flour 
• Sea Salt
• Baking powder
• Pecans
• Caramel Chips

My biggest disappointment is that Hershey discontinued their Caramel Sea Salt Chips. So I have had to redo several recipes to change that ingredient. Here is a link to Amazon.com, for the Lieber's Caramel Chips, but they sell the 3 bag option. This time of year, most of the places that sell one bag are out of stock.

Making Banana Pecan Cookies

These are pretty easy cookies to make, but there are a few things to prep before mixing the cookie dough. But other than that, it is smooth sailing.

Prepping

Pecans are easy to chop up into small pieces. My store has a variety of sizes for the pecans. If you can get them already chopped, skip this step.

The second most effortless part of this cookie is mashing the bananas so you can add them to the cookie dough. One of the main things I do is buy my bananas a week before I am going to use them. I try to get my bananas between no brown spots on the outside to being all dark brown on the outside. The bananas that do not have any brown spots on the outside do not have a strong banana taste when baked.

Depending on the size of your bananas, I mash and then add to a measuring cup. If your bananas are small, it may take 3 for this recipe.

Next, weigh or measure the sugars and set them aside. You also want to weigh or measure the flour into a bowl. Add to the flour the baking powder and sea salt running a whisk through to blend.

Mixing the Banana Pecan Caramel Cookies

I cube my butter before adding it to the bowl. I can tell how cold the butter still is by how much force it takes to cut through the butter stick. It may take a little longer mixing if the butter is still really cold.

If the butter is room temperature, it only takes about 2 minutes to cream the butter. If it is colder, it can take 3 to 4 minutes.

Next, add the sugars. Mix on a medium mixer speed for 3 minutes. There is more sugar than butter, so it will look grainy.

Now comes the egg and vanilla extract. Mix until incorporated.

Next, add the mashed bananas and the sour cream. The sour cream breaks into small pieces and your wet cookie dough will look broken, but it is not. Everything will come together after the flour is added.

It is time to add the chips and the pecans. Mix for about 10 seconds. It does not take long to mix these into the rest of the wet cookie dough.

Finally, I take the mixer bowl off the mixer and add the flour mixture. Using a spatula, mix it all together. It does not take much to mix the flour mixture into the wet ingredients.

Cover and refrigerate for 30 minutes. This way, all the flavors meld together.

Baking the Cookies

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C or 180°C). Grab a medium cookie scooper. You can just use a spoon and drop the cookies, but try to keep them about the same size for even baking. I also get 2 cookie sheet pans ready by lining them with parchment-paper.

Scoop 12 scoops of cookie dough and evenly space them on the prepared cookie sheet pan, and bake them for 11-13 minutes.

You want them, a little brown around the bottom edge, before pulling them out of the oven and moving them to a cooling rack.

Enjoy!

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