Banana Fudge Cookies

Banana fudge cookies are the kind of shortcut dessert every busy home cook should know. A box of chocolate cake mix becomes the entire dry-ingredient base, replacing flour, cocoa, sugar, salt, and leavening in one move. Mashed banana, one egg, and a splash of water turn it into a dense fudgy cookie dough that scoops and bakes like a pro batch from a real bakery.

The banana ratio is the smart part. Just a third of a cup of mashed bananas flavors the cookies without dominating, so you taste the chocolate first and the banana as the finishing note. More banana would soften the cookies into cake-like rounds; less and you’d lose the moisture that gives these their fudgy chew.

Six ounces of semi-sweet chocolate chips folded in at the end is what doubles the chocolate hit. Without them, these are good cake-mix cookies. With them, they’re rich enough to hold their own next to any from-scratch double-chocolate recipe.

Eight minutes is the right bake. They look slightly underdone when they come out, which is exactly what you want; they finish setting on the hot pan and stay fudgy at the center.

Pro Tips

• Use very ripe bananas with deep brown spots. Yellow bananas don’t have enough sweetness or aroma.
• Drop dough by rounded teaspoonfuls only. Tablespoon-sized scoops bake unevenly and get cakey.
• Cool on the baking sheet for 2 minutes before transferring. They’re delicate when warm.
• Underbake slightly for a fudgier center. They look soft but firm up.

Variations

• Use white cake mix and add 2 tablespoons cocoa for a milder cookie.
• Sub white chocolate chips or butterscotch chips for the semi-sweet for a sweeter variation.
• Stir in ½ cup chopped walnuts for nutty crunch.