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:
Chocolate Coconut Macaroons
A few years ago, I bought a double drink dispenser for the kids’ birthday party. I served both iced tea and lemonade with flavored simple syrups so that party guests could have whatever combination they wanted to drink. The only reason I bring this up is because the dispenser works equally well for holding a single beverage, like Lime Punch. I hesitate to even refer to this as a recipe. It’s something small children can make easily and probably have made a version of it at a soda fountain at some point. Heck, these days, there are those dispensers that will do it for you. It’s limeade and lemon-lime soda. I suppose someone could get all fancy and use ginger ale, except as my mom experienced, ginger ale is not available in all parts of Iowa. Use ginger beer and you have the non-alcoholic version of a Moscow Mule. You could even serve it in fancy copper mugs. (We didn’t. I think we used red solo cups.) (We also didn’t use ginger beer.)
Ok, about those cookies. When the boys were little we took them out to a restaurant on a Friday night. The kids meals came with a choice of dessert. One boy ordered a chocolate chip cookie before he was told the options and the other chose an M&M cookie after listening to his choices. In order to prevent a jealous fight (which was more common in those days than it is now) we asked if the waitress could please just bring us 2 M&M cookies. She did as we asked and the younger boy started crying. “I don’t like M&M cookies.” We struggled to console him. “I thought you did.” “I don’t…except on Fridays” he wailed. “It is Friday,” we told him gently. Immediately the tears dried up. “Ok,” he said and happily munched his M&M cookie as we looked on bewildered. You’d think after that sort of quick mood shift I’d be more ready for their preteen hormones.
Whether it’s Friday night or Sunday afternoon, dry your tears and make these cookies. If you buy a big bag of M&M’s you may be able to pick out your team colors for the cookies. (which means you also get to snack on all those other colors.) For those of you who are aware of such things, I made this recipe some time before “our” team was eliminated from the Super Bowl. (You can probably even guess which team we cheer for). 
From a very early age, I loved a good mystery. More often than not, the books I have checked out in Overdrive are mysteries. The really good ones have twists that you never see coming. The silly ones are fairly obvious from early on and I spend most of the book waiting for the characters to catch up to where I already am.There was one book I read a few years back where the main character knew who the killer was by asking for them for an answer to a cryptic crossword. I was confounded at the time, but have since learned to do cryptics. Not nearly as well as my friend that takes existing crossword puzzles and then writes his own clues to the answers. Also, not nearly as well, as our other friend who just has the sort of brain that overthinks everything (Yes, mom, even worse than I do.) I do best when I have someone else with whom I can discuss the possibilities. 
I am usually pretty good at sussing out secrets. Not always to my benefit. Occasionally, though, there are things that I just never see coming. Like when my half-brother became my half-sister. Never saw that coming.
This recipe was an easy one. It just didn’t have a title. Or instructions. It’s probably a good thing that the thing I like to read best after mysteries is cookbooks. Yep. Just read them like novels. It’s a great way to see how ingredients are supposed to go together and which foods pair well with other foods. It gives you an idea of the culture and values of populations. Shows you how much time people have to cook or bake. It’s an anthropological study (read: mystery). 
