Caramelized Pineapple Banana Drop Cookies

This month’s Recipe Redux theme:

First Cooking Recollections

Stir up some of your earliest culinary recollections. Did you stand at your grandmother’s elbow to learn to cook? Or did you learn by stumbling through a cookbook by yourself? Share a healthy recipe and the accompanying story about one of your first cooking memories.

My grandmother was a proud New England cook, creating hearty homemade meals for her husband and 6 kids, but as she got older, she really started to think about the nutritional value of what she was making. Everything was always homemade, but even then, it could still be laden with fats, sugar, and other unhealthy ingredients.

I don’t remember grandma really at all, I was 6 when she passed away. But what I do have is her love of cooking, which she passed on to my father, and he to me, and also her legacy in the form of a cookbook she wrote.  She didn’t get to finish publishing it before she passed away, but everyone in the family has a copy of it, photocopied card-stock recipes all in grandma’s handwriting, held together with three large binder rings.

Grandma was very worried about the abundance of white sugar in the American diet, which seems especially appropriate today given the recent revelations about the sugar industry downplaying it’s negative side effects. She, herself, suffered from diabetes and other health issues, and she was determined to find better, healthier ways to enjoy baking and desserts. None of her recipes contain cane or processed sugars, she used maple syrup, fruits, dates, honey and molasses as sweeteners.

I’ve made a number of her recipes and sadly, for my modern sweet-tooth, which isn’t even that strong comparatively, they just aren’t anywhere near sweet enough for me to consider them a dessert; that is probably a testament to just how addicted we all are to sugar. I’m more a believer in moderation instead of complete abstinence and when I have dessert, I want it to be a real dessert, sweet and delicious with any healthiness carefully tucked away so I can enjoy my indulgence completely.

With that in mind, the first time I made my grandma’s Pineapple Spice Drop Cookies, I didn’t feel like I was eating a cookie at all. It was more like a lightly sweetened spicy scone, which isn’t bad, but it’s not what I think about when I think about cookies. I was determined to keep the essence of the recipe the same as grandma’s original but I made a few changes. There is still no refined sugar in these cookies; I could not do that to grandma’s recipe when she was such a proponent, and really on the cutting edge, of the health food movement in the 70’s.

The sweeteners she had in the recipe were banana, pineapple and honey. So, after some serious brain-storming about how to make pineapple taste sweeter, it occurred to me to caramelize it. And then, bananas are awesome and sweeter when they are caramelized as well, so I added them all together with maple (instead of honey) and simmered it down to a sweet, brown-sugary-tasting deliciousness, and it worked a charm.

I also veganized the recipe by replacing the egg with aquafaba and using maple syrup instead of honey.

I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed re-creating this recipe. I am now feeling inspired to play around with some of grandma’s other recipes and see if I can make them appeal more to current taste buds and sweetness expectations!

Check out what other Reduxer’s created from their cooking recollections —->>> click the blue frog 😀

Print Recipe

Caramelized Pineapple Banana Drop Cookies

Packed with tropical flavors, this simple drop cookie is sweetened naturally without refined sugars. Sugar-free, vegan, oil-free.

Prep Time

25

Cook Time

12

Servings

Ingredients

• 1 20oz can crushed pineapple (equal to 2 cups, not drained)
• 3/4 cup mashed ripe bananas (approx. 2 bananas)
• 1/3 cup maple syrup
• 3 tablespoons aquafaba
• 1/3 cup non-dairy milk
• 1 3/4 cup all purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt (omit if aquafaba is salted)
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

Prep Time 25 Cook Time 12 Servings Ingredients 1 20oz can crushed pineapple (equal to 2 cups, not drained) 3/4 cup mashed ripe bananas (approx. 2 bananas) 1/3 cup maple syrup 3 tablespoons aquafaba 1/3 cup non-dairy milk 1 3/4 cup all purpose flour 1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder 1 teaspoon baking soda 1/2 teaspoon salt (omit if aquafaba is salted) 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

Instructions

1. In a saucepan, combine the crushed pineapple, mashed bananas, maple syrup and aquafaba. Bring to a simmer and let cook down until it equals 2 cups. Most of the liquid will evaporate and it will become a deep caramel brown. This takes about 20 minutes. Let cool completely.
2. Measure the pineapple mixture, you want 2 cups of this caramelized goodness. If it's more than 2 cups, cook it down longer. If it is less than 2 cups, add a little bit of water to make it equal to that.
3. Preheat oven to 350F. Lightly grease 2 cookie sheets or line with parchment paper or a silpat to keep it completely oil-free.
4. In a large bowl, combine the pineapple mixture and the non-dairy milk.
5. Add the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and cloves. Mix gently until well combined.
6. Drop tablespoons of cookie dough 1" apart on prepared baking sheets and bake for 10-12 minutes.
7. Let cool a few minutes on cookie sheets, then remove to wire racks to cool completely. Enjoy!

Recipe Notes

Aquafaba is the liquid from a can of beans, like chickpeas or cannelloni beans. That liquid that you usually drain down the sink, keep it! It makes an excellent egg replacement :-D. www.aquafaba.com

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