Quick and Easy. Two words that are often seen together and offer so much hope. “You can do this!” they say. It almost promises success. If you can’t do quick and easy without training, what does that say about you? It’s like a get-rich-quick scheme. It’s your fault if it doesn’t work because it’s easy. It’s quick. So it must be you. The thing is, not doing quick and easy is sometimes the route you need to take. Quick and Easy, even when done correctly, doesn’t necessarily yield the best product. That’s the case with these cookies.
Banana Cream Sponge Cookies sound delicious. In my head, I had this vision of these moist banana flavored cookies. Something like a sponge cake, but in a cookie. Banana cream pie in a cookie. My expectations were completely shattered by these cookies.
Let me try to articulate what it was about these cookies that disappointed me. It wasn’t the flavor. I mean, with banana pudding as an ingredient, you expect that sort of wonderful fake banana flavor. You know that flavor, the one with the chemical aftertaste. So it wasn’t that.
As the cookies were baking, the house smelled great. It was that warm, vanilla-y baking cookie smell. I tried putting the kisses on one of the pans as it went into the oven and put kisses on the other pan as they came out of the oven to see if it made a difference. It really didn’t. I put the spatula under one cookie to lift it off the pan and sort of suspected that there was something wrong. There was just something about the way the cookie lifted that made me question the texture.
When the cookies were slightly cool, I tried one. I hadn’t realized that the sponge referred to in the recipe title was a used dish sponge. I thought maybe it was fluke and the texture would improve when the cookies cooled. I gathered up some cookies and put them on my beautiful plates and got my photos. I came back in the house and tried another cookie. It was possibly even worse. I left them on the counter and waited to see what happened when the kids came down.
I made them eat dinner first, of course. We had chicken thighs and some other things. My son’s friend informed us that he didn’t eat bones. We deboned the chicken for him. They each helped themselves to a cookie after dinner. Only one. The girl tried to eat more than one, but ended up just eating the chocolate kisses off the top and throwing away the cookie. Cue the sad trombones.
This is a great idea. Quick and easy using processed ingredients sort of seems like it could be a good thing. It has promise and potential, but like so many other things in life, don’t take a shortcut. Find a different recipe for Banana cookies, or better yet, try one of these other great cookie recipes: Mystery Cookies, Apple Walnut Cookies (these freeze well and taste great months later), Real Orange Cookies, or M&M Party Cookies.
The recipe:
Oh dear. That would be disappointing. I mean, who doesn’t love packaged banana pudding?
There is something gross, but really appealing about fake banana flavor.