I made a few healthy swaps in with these cookies. Mostly the whole wheat white flour and natural sweetener substitutes in place of all the sugar. I also used a dark mini chocolate chip since dark chocolate is not only my favorite, but also has more antioxidants than semi-sweet or milk chocolates.
These aren’t SMALL cookies either. I kept thinking when I first took them out that they would fall and settle into a shorter cookie, but they didn’t! They remained risen and perfectly textured for a soft chocolate chip cookie. Yes, SOFT cookie. These don’t have much crunch to them other than the walnuts.
Banana, walnut, and chocolate are always an amazing
combination of ingredients, no matter what the delivery system, but it really doesn’t
get any better than in this ganache-frosted cupcake. A close second would be a
chocolate-dipped frozen banana, rolled in walnuts, which is also a great treat,
although much more awkward to eat in public.
Just be sure to buy your bananas way ahead of time. Using
green bananas would be one of the few ways to mess this up, so I’d pick some up
at least a week ahead of time, and wait until they’re starting to turn black
before using them. For some extra flavor, a little banana liqueur wouldn’t be a
bad idea, but these were great as is.
I thought the dark chocolate ganache was a perfect frosting,
especially after trying them with a banana-based buttercream, which ended up
being way too sweet for such a decadent cupcake. Of course, you can skip the
frosting all together, and simply make a batch of the world’s best chocolate,
walnut, banana muffins. Either way, I really do hope you give these a try soon.
Enjoy!
Ingredients for 12 Chunky Monkey Cupcakes:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon kosher salt
3 ripe bananas, mashed
2 tablespoons milk
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup soft butter
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup chopped walnuts
1 1/4 cup dark chocolate chips or chunks
12 banana chip for garnish, optional
– Bake at 350 F. for about 25 minutes.
For the Dark Chocolate Frosting:
1 cup dark chocolate chips
1 cup very hot, but not boiling cream
– Pour cream over chips, wait a few minutes, and stir. Wait
until mixture is cool enough to be spreadable.
After banana nut on my mind, and a pantry full of leftover oatmeal, I pretty much knew immediately what I was going to be making this week for breakfast. Some sort of… banana nut oatmeal. But! Not just any banana nut oatmeal. I wanted it to be chunky monkey style. What’s chunky monkey? Well, one of my most favorite flavors of ice cream that’s made with bananas, chocolate chunks, and walnuts.
There you have it, chunky monkey oatmeal. Of course, one of my favorite ways to make oatmeal is for it to be baked and ‘Amish’ style. This breakfast oatmeal also happens to be gluten-free (so long as you mind your brand of oats.)
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