Banana Cinnamon Biscuits

Mmmmmm.....these cookies smell soooooo good! And of course, they have so far been a hit with the dogs. Not that I thought they wouldn't be.:) The recipe that I tried out this month was for Banana Cinnamon Biscuits. This is a great recipe to use to get rid of any over ripe bananas you may have around. Unfortunately we did not, but regular ripe bananas worked out just as well for us! Again, I'll put my little notes in italics along with the recipe as is.

Yields 30 biscuits (I doubled the recipe and got 67)

1 cup unbleached flour

1 cup whole-wheat floud

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 ripe banana, mashed

1/4 cup natural unsalted peanut butter

1/4 cup grated carrot (I forgot to pick carrots up at the grocery store so I added more banana and more peanut butter to make up for it)

1/2 cup filtered water (water from the tap works just great!)

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.

2. Measure the unbleached flour, whole-wheat flour, baking powder, and cinnamon into a mixing bowl. Whisk until combined.

3. Combine the mashed banana, peanut butter, carrot, and water in a glass measuring cup. Stir with a fork till smooth and creamy.

4. Make a well in the flour, and pour in the banana-peanut butter mixture. Mix on medium speed using a paddle attachment until combined. For this part, I decided to again try mixing without using the actual mixer. This time around it worked out really well! Everything got mixed into a nice dough. I did end up using my hands to finish getting everything completely mixed, but it came out sooooo much better than the "dough" from the last recipe that I tried!

5. Turn the dough out onto a slightly floured surface and gently knead until dough is smooth and still soft. Roll the dough 1/4-inch thick and cut the biscuits into desired shapes with cookie cutters. I opted not to roll the dough out. I don't like to add in a lot of extra work that I feel isn't all that necessary. The dough was too sticky for me to just lay it out and use a cookie cutter (which I know the additional flour would have helped with) and I didn't really feel like spending the added time cutting the cookies out when the dogs don't really care what it looks like as long as it fits in their mouths! I just used my hands and placed flattened balls of dough out on the parchment paper.

6. Place the biscuits on a parchment-lined cookie sheet and bake 12-15 minutes till dry and firm to the touch. Turn the oven off and leave biscuits in another 20-30 minutes. Remove them from the oven, cool them on a baking rack, and sotre them in a cookie tin. So I didn't exactly feel like the additional 20-30 min. in the oven was all that necessary and just layed the cookies out on a cooling rack after they were done baking. Not to mention all the additional time it would take to let the cookies sit in there with the oven off, then have to reheat the oven, and then go through the whole process with each batch of cookies. I wasn't in the mood for slaving away for a few hours in the kitchen just for some cookies. At any rate, the cookies have turned out great!

The dogs were very eager to tast test their new treats!