Cheese & Banana Cookie

Ever since starting my 52 week cookie challenge, I’ve slowly tried to introduce typically savory ingredients into my cookies.  The Momofuku Milk Bar corn cookie was a nice starting point.  From there I experimented with cookies that incorporated things like miso, fermented shrimp paste, tomatoes, and sumac.  After my most recent meal at Alinea, I was inspired to make a pea-based cookie which ended up being quite phenomenal.  The pea cookie was actually my favorite cookie I’d made so far.  Then week 33 rolled around and the cheese & banana cookie was born.

A few weeks prior, some coworkers and I were talking about Cheetos.  Naturally the discussion lead to a Cheetos cookie, and a batch was made shortly after.  This cheese & corn cookie based off of the Milk Bar corn cookie ratios was a unanimous winner, although I wouldn’t really call it a Cheetos cookie.  The cheese flavor was subtle, but the aroma was very cheesy.  The flavor was creamy and buttery, and the smell was reminiscent of Cheez-Its.

To take the cheese & corn cookie to the next level I bumped up the amount of cheese and did what I usually do: revert back to childhood.  One of my favorite after school snacks as a child was a banana wrapped in a Kraft single.  The mix between salty and sweet was always a winner, and who doesn’t love Kraft singles?  When you think about it, it’s not that odd of a combination as fruit and cheese are a classic pairing.

For my cheese & banana cookie, I decided to use yet another childhood favorite: Vietnamese dried bananas.  They’re not like banana chips.  Think of them as like sun-dried bananas glazed in honey.  The sun-drying concentrates the banana flavor, which is already pretty amped up due to the fact that ripe apple bananas are used.  I find the banana flavor in apple bananas much more intense than your average banana.

After baking the cookies off, the outer half of the cookie was nice and crunchy, while the center half was perfectly soft and fudgy.  That’s the beauty of the Milk Bar cookie recipes.  A third iteration of the cheese cookie will likely find it’s way into my oven based on a tip I received about adding roasted sweet peppers in addition to the bananas.

Cheese & Banana Cookie

Mise En Place

1. Follow M.E.P. for the Momofuku Milk Bar corn cookie with the following substitutions and additions
2. 225 g flour => 265 g flour
3. 45 g corn flour => 0 g corn flour
4. 65 g freeze-dried corn powder => 75 g powdered cheese
5. 3 g baking powder => 1.5 g baking powder
6. 6 g kosher salt => 8 g kosher salt
7. 150 g Vietnamese dried banana, diced into 1 cm x 0.5 cm pieces

Method

1. Follow method for the Momofuku Milk Bar corn cookie with the following additions
2. After flour, leaveners, and powdered cheese have been mixed, add banana and mix until evenly distributed, no more than 30 seconds