What Do You Get If You Cross Banana Bread with a Snickerdoodle?: Banana Bread Snickerdoodles

One of the cookbook releases I was most eagerly anticipating this fall was BraveTart by Stella Parks. I love reading Stella's articles and recipes on Serious Eats, and her macaron recipe and pie crust recipe have been game-changers for me. And as I was figuring out what to do with the extra bananas I had on hand after making banana cupcakes and yeasted banana sandwich bread, I decided to try Stella's banana bread variation of snickerdoodles. In comparison to her base snickerdoodle recipe, they include oat flour, mashed banana, ground cloves, and toasted walnut pieces.

This recipe requires no chilling or waiting time, so it's pretty quick to put together. You beat cool unsalted butter, coconut oil, sugar, salt, baking powder, nutmeg, and vanilla until light and fluffy; add a cold egg; mix in mashed banana and cloves; add all-purpose flour and oat flour (I just put old-fashioned oats in my spice grinder); and fold in toasted chopped walnuts. I used a #30 scoop to portion out the dough and rolled each piece in a mixture of sugar and cinnamon (the recipe calls for both ground cinnamon and grated cinnamon but I used ground cinnamon only). You bake the cookies at 400 degrees for a few minutes before rotating the baking sheets and turning down the oven to 350 degrees for the remainder of the baking time. I got 31 cookies from one batch of dough.
The baked cookies had a slightly lumpy appearance from the walnuts but otherwise would easily pass for regular snickerdoodles. I love snickerdoodles and I thought this banana bread variation was fantastic. There was a nice clear banana flavor and the cookies were crispy around the edges and softer in the middle. I love nuts in cookies and appreciated the crunch and flavor of the walnuts. I enjoyed these cookies as much as a regular snickerdoodle or a piece of banana bread -- they're a wonderful hybrid of the two.

Recipe: "Snickerdoodles (Banana Bread Variation)," from Bravetart by Stella Parks.

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Comments

Sally said…
Thanks for the review! Have you made anything else from her book? I'm tempted by the white mountain cake...
I am very sad to report that this is the only recipe I've made so far. But I'm definitely planning to make many more!!