Banana and Chocolate Cookies

For months now I've had a packet of home made cranberry and orange butter in the freezer. Initially I think I made it to go with Christmas meats or pastry even but for some reason it got forgotten... it was in the frosty depths for quite a while.. but when you only have two freezer draws you have to be fairly efficient at rotating things though somehow this kept off the radar...until yesterday... as in the fruit bowl was also this:

Fruit ripens very quickly at home, its a warm flat at the best of times and I am sure the bananas were a fairly recent buy but had already gone er, black nearly and it was high time it got used.. I have a repertoire of banana recipes but most use two or more, and I only had this sad one... fortunately I remembered a recipe I had picked out a few months back for a Random Recipe challenge but never got entered as life typically interfered.. the butter called for was the regular kind, however I was determined to use the flavoured butter up and after a quick lick to check it wasn't too far gone I decided to give it life in the form of these cookies:

It was also my birthday this week, and I finally got a 2nd decent baking tray so managed to cook them all in one go, rather than improvising with a roasting tin and swapping trays around, so much easier! Unfortunately I am still off sick from work but without speaking too soon I am finally feeling a bit more human and hoping to return in the near future...now I can just about get the ingredients out of the bottom cupboard I definitely feel happier at least!

I have borrowed this cookie recipe from a book simply called 'Cookies' by Love Food. Its a great book packed with 200 cookie recipes! The original recipe called for raisins so I have listed as optional but I decided to omit them with using the cranberry studded butter, I also used cinnamon instead of mixed spice, mainly as I don't have any! For the chocolate chunks I used 3/4 of a bar of Fine Cook's milk chocolate from Dr Oetker hacked up with a knife, which worked perfectly and kept its shape well and tasted good too!

Makes apparently up to 20, I got er 12. They are nicely sized though...

Ingredients:

125g caster sugar
125g soft butter
175g self raising flour
1 large beaten egg
1 mashed ripe banana
2 tbsp milk
100g chocolate, cut into chunks
1 tsp cinnamon (or the mixed spice)

Optional:
55g raisins
1 tsp mixed spice

Oven 190o/ 375f/ gas 5

Line two large baking trays/ cookie sheets

Cream the butter and sugar until fluffy, beat in the egg. Add the mashed banana and mix until smooth.

Sift the flour and cinnamon together, add to the mix followed by them milk to make a smooth consistency. (I used my k chef on low speed) Fold in the chocolate, and raisins if using.

Drop dessertspoons onto a baking sheet, allowing them space! They will spread out!

Bake for 15-20 minutes or until golden and still soft in the middle. Leave to cool slightly on the trays and transfer to a wire rack to fully cool down.

This is what one looks upside down - so you can see the lovely chocolatey chunks - they are really rather too edible, soft and cake like but just about keep together. I love the fragrant orange scented butter and will now have to make some more I think for the next batch, providing of course I can fully remember what went in it...

As I managed to not only use the sad lonely banana and the frosty orange butter I am entering these cookies into the No Waste Food challenge, set up by Elizabeth's Kitchen Diary and this month hosted by Farmers Girl. Don't forget I am July's host so save your leftovers ;-)!

Thanks also to Dr Oetker for providing the chocolate!