This *might* just be my favorite cookie recipe I’ve ever made, which is saying something because I have over 50 on my site.
I tested these insanely delicious salted brown butter banana chocolate chunk cookies not once, not twice, but literally 5 times when I first made them because I knew they were going to be something special. And OMG. Truly exceptional is the only way to describe them. They have those perfect edges with a fudgy, chewy middle, and pack in the flavor from caramel-like brown butter, sweet banana, and rich dark chocolate in every bite.
These cookies were love at first bite — my whole team and family instantly became obsessed. They’re truly a MUST bake!
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Ingredients in these banana chocolate chunk cookies
These deliciously fudgy brown butter banana cookies use simple ingredients and pack delicious flavor. Here’s what you’ll need:
- Butter: you already know we’re browning salted butter to give the cookies that rich, nutty, caramel-like flavor.
- Banana: you’ll add real mashed banana right to the dough for moisture and sweetness.
- Sugar: we’re using a mix of granulated sugar and brown sugar to sweeten the cookies.
- Flaxseed meal: just a bit of flaxseed meal helps the cookies bake up without an egg. Don’t skip it!
- Flour: you’ll need regular all-purpose flour to bake these cookies.
- Baking staples: don’t forget the vanilla extract, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt.
- Chocolate: chop up a dark chocolate bar to get those beautiful, melty chocolate chunks. I like Lindt 70% dark chocolate!
- To garnish: as always, sprinkle your cookies with a little flaky sea salt for that sweet and salty magic.
Wait, there’s no egg?
You read that correctly! The combination of mashed banana and flaxseed meal acts as the binder in these cookies. So they’re completely egg-free! I haven’t tested these cookies using an egg, so I can’t recommend swapping the egg in for the flaxseed meal.
Can I use a frozen banana?
Sure! Just remember to thaw the banana and drain off the liquid before adding it to the recipe.
Can I make them gluten-free or dairy-free?
- To make gluten-free: please note that I have NOT tested these banana chocolate chunk cookies using a gluten-free flour, but I suggest trying it with a 1:1 gluten-free all-purpose flour if you’d like! A few readers in the comments have used this flour with success!
- To make dairy-free: use a vegan / dairy-free butter instead — you’ll simply melt it instead of browning it, as most vegan butters do not brown.
Make these brown butter banana cookies your own
I love the puddles of dark chocolate paired with the sweet banana flavor in this recipe, but you could also:
- Swap the chocolate chunks for chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, or even butterscotch chips
- Add 1/2 cup of toasted nuts (walnuts would be delicious)
- Skip the mix-ins and top the cookies with my famous Peanut Butter Frosting, my Chocolate Buttercream Frosting, or my salted brown butter cream cheese frosting from this cake recipe (you’ll like need to halve the recipes)
Glorious banana chocolate chunk cookies in 5 steps
- Brown the butter. Start by browning your salted butter in a skillet until it’s amber in color and smells nice and nutty. Scrape ALL of the brown bits into a bowl to cool. Get my tips for browning butter here!
- Mix the wet ingredients. Mix all of your wet ingredients in a large bowl until the mixture looks like caramel.
- Finish the dough. Add the dry ingredients right into your bowl and mix until just combined, then fold in the chocolate chunks.
- Time to chill! That’s right, you’ll chill the dough in the fridge for at least 2 hours before baking.
- Bake, cool & devour. Scoop your cold dough into balls onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, then bake at 375 degrees (this temp is important!) Pull them out right when the edges start turning golden brown, then sprinkle with sea salt and cool before devouring.
Don’t forget my cookie-baking tips
Reminder that you’ll find all of my best tips & tricks for making perfect cookies in the Ultimate Guide to Cookie Baking e-book! A few key takeaways for these banana chocolate chunk cookies:
- Substitute at your own risk. Please be sure to follow the recipe as written unless substitutes are noted in the notes section of the recipe. Changing ingredients will likely change the texture and/or flavor of the cookies, so do so at your own risk.
- Use room temp ingredients. After browning your butter, set it aside until it’s cooled to room temperature so that it doesn’t affect the texture of the cookies.
- Use fresh baking soda. Make sure your baking soda is fresh to ensure that these cookies bake up properly.
- Measure your ingredients correctly. In this recipe, it’s VERY important to measure out the mashed banana instead of just mashing and using 1 full banana. I weighed the ingredients for these cookies, as you’ll see in the full recipe below. If you don’t have a scale, be sure to use this method for measuring flour.
- CHILL the dough. I know it seems tedious, but you really do want to chill your dough for at least 2 hours so that the cookies do not come out flat!
Storing & freezing tips
- To store: store these brown butter banana cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days.
- To freeze: you can actually freeze the cookie dough OR the freshly baked cookies to enjoy later! Get all of my tips and tricks for freezing cookies here.
My favorite cookie-baking tools
- Baking sheets
- Parchment paper
- Mixing bowls
- Whisk
- Stand mixer or hand mixer
- Cookie dough scoop
- Cooling rack
Get all of my kitchen essentials here!
More cookie recipes you’ll love
- Taylor Swift’s Soft Chai Sugar Cookies with Vanilla Bean Cream Cheese Frosting
- The Best Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies You’ll Ever Eat
- Vanilla Brown Sugar Oatmeal Latte Cookies with Espresso Icing
- The Best Bakery-Style Soft Peanut Butter Cookies
- Teddy Graham Marshmallow Banana Cookies
Get all of my cookie recipes here!
I hope you love these banana chocolate chunk cookies! If you make them, be sure to leave a comment and a rating so I know how you liked them. Enjoy, xo!
Ambitious Kitchen
Cookbook
125 Ridiculously Good For You, Sometimes Indulgent, and Absolutely Never Boring Recipes for Every Meal of the Day
Salted Brown Butter Banana Chocolate Chunk Cookies
Ingredients
- Wet ingredients:
- ½ cup (113g) salted butter
- ⅓ cup (95g) mashed banana (from 1 medium ripe banana) YOU MUST MEASURE THIS OUT
- ¾ cup (150g) granulated sugar
- ¼ cup (53g) packed brown sugar
- 1 tablespoon flaxseed meal (DO NOT SKIP THIS!)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- Dry ingredients:
- 1 ⅔ cup (200g) all purpose flour
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
- 3.5 ounces dark chocolate (Lindt 70% dark chocolate melts beautifully in these!), coarsely chopped into chunks
- To garnish:
- Flaky sea salt (I like Maldon)
Instructions
- Brown the butter: Melt the butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. Once melted, whisk constantly; the butter will begin to crackle, then eventually foam. After a few minutes, the butter will begin to turn a golden amber color. As soon as the butter turns an amber brown brown and gives off a nutty aroma, 5 to 8 minutes total, remove from the heat and transfer to a medium bowl to cool for 5 to 10 minutes. MAKE SURE YOU SCRAPE ALL THE BROWN BITS INTO THE BOWL WITH A RUBBER SPATULA! Every little yummy bit counts!
- Mix the wet ingredients: Measure out ⅓ cup (95g) mashed banana. If you have excess mashed banana, you can discard it. It is important to not use any more than ⅓ cup or these cookies will not bake up properly. (Trust me, I tested the recipe 5 times!) After it is mashed, beat the banana in the bowl with the brown butter using a fork for 30 seconds until virtually no lumps remain. Next, add in the granulated sugar, brown sugar, flaxseed meal and vanilla extract and whisk until smooth and the mixture resembles caramel.
- Add the dry ingredients: In the same bowl with the wet ingredients, add in the flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Fold the dry ingredients into the dough with a wooden spoon until well combined. Next, gently fold in the chocolate chunks.
- Chill the dough: Cover the bowl with the dough with plastic wrap and transfer to the fridge to chill for a minimum of 2 hours or up to 24 hours.
- Once ready to bake: Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. (Again, I want to make sure we know the proper temp is 375 degrees F.!) 🙂 Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Bake: Once the oven is preheated, make your dough balls (you want to have cold dough going onto the baking sheet). Measure about 1 ½-2 tablespoons of dough and roll into a ball, placing dough balls at least 3 inches apart. Bake for 9 to 11 minutes until the edges of the cookies are lightly golden brown. Mine were perfect at 10 minutes every time. Remove from the oven, immediately sprinkle with sea salt, then allow cookies to cool on the cookie sheet for 15 to 20 minutes. Enjoy!
Recipe Notes
Recipe by: Monique Volz // Ambitious Kitchen | Photography by: Eat Love Eats
This post was originally published on December 6th, 2024, and republished on March 7th, 2026.
I made them and they were an absolute hit! And you’re absolutely right about being the favorite cookies ever! Crispy bottom, chewy from the center, balanced sweetness, it can’t get better!
So good!! Glad you loved them!
Monique is right, these are the BEST cookies. I am not usually a chocolate chip cookie gal, but these are INCREDIBLE. My husband and I are obsessed.
So glad you loved these! We’re obsessed, too 🙂
WOW!!! I had these on my list to try for a long time and finally got around to it today. Your recipe notes are perfection! These cookies are so incredible! I think they get even better with time. I will definitely be making these again.
So good!! Glad you loved them and finally got to try them!
So, as a (mostly) savory food blog photographer, I chose to make these cookies because of three things: the name, the photos, and how incredibly simple the directions were. Making and shooting really complicated recipes every week makes you crave simple but solid. I also LOVED all of the extra notes about how many times you tested the recipe and basically all the yelling at us to follow your recipe exactly. I can 100% appreciate and relate to this. I just want to say that these cookies are f***ing phenomenal and if calories weren’t a thing that could destroy your health I would eat these with every meal. If I could bathe in these cookies, I would. If I could barter these cookies to receive automotive services, I would. Basically, these cookies are almost the equivalent to winning the lotto. Thank you for this recipe and I will definitely make them 4 million more times.
YES love that! So glad you enjoyed (and got to have something sweet to pair with your savory work!)
I am always looking for recipes to use up old bananas and this one if my new favorite. So good jd so easy to make with my toddler’s “help”
The perfect treat!!
These were an instant hit among my friends + great new addition to my baking rotation!
So happy to hear that!
There is something magic about these…the banana flavor is odd at first, but I can’t stop eating them lol. They may have the PERFECT cookie texture- crisp edges and an incredibly chewy center. (I’ve made these 3 times and for each of twox9 cookie trays I go about 10 min and 30 sec).
I’m always looking to reduce sugar and I’ve cut the granulated sugar by 1/4 cup and to me the cookies were perfectly sweet.
I always do a mix of dark and semisweet when I bake and that worked well in these. The batch with the guittard super cookie chips in them was my fave…puddles of chocolate.
Also make yourself wait till they’re cool although they are delicious warm they get better as they cool!
Agreed on the magic! So happy you love them!
Hi, could you do similar to your brown butter chocolate chip cookies in that you chill the dough for 10 minutes, then scoop them into balls, and then let chill the 2+ hours? Thanks.
Yes!
These cookies were delicious, I’ll definitely be making them again. I subbed chocolate chips for the dark chocolate because it’s what I had on hand. The whole family loved them.
Perfect! Glad they were a hit!
I made these for a friend and his response was “Those were the best freaking cookies I’ve ever eaten” , except he didn’t use freakin 😉 . wow. wow. wow. Thank you!!!!
Take it from me: quadruple the batch. Freeze the dough in batches. Amazing cookies whenever you want them. It’s our family’s favorite cookie recipe.
YES great idea! So happy to hear it’s a favorite 🙂
Do we use dark or light brown sugar please?
Either will work! Dark will have more of a molasses flavor.
Just made and these truly are incredible!! Followed directions exactly and measures ingredients and they came out perfectly! The flavor is SO GOOD! Thank you!
Love it! So happy you enjoyed!
These were absolutely delicious! For anyone else who is GF, I used Bob’s Red Mill 1-to-1 gluten free baking flour and they turned out perfectly.
Love it! Glad you enjoyed!
These are fantastic and super easy to make. Will definitely be making these again. I didn’t have oat flour so used rice flour instead.
I’m glad that worked out well! Perfect dessert 🙂
These are the BEST chocolate chip cookies. I’ve made them at least 10 times since Christmas (whoops haha!). Follow directions exactly and pull out of oven around 9-10 mins. They are moist, flavorful and absolutely delicious! I started adding allspice and a little cardamom because of love those spices. The original recipe is 10/10 though. My Mom is even obsessed and she’s a homemaker with her own cookie recipes! Very, very well done AK!!
So good!! Glad to hear they’re a favorite!
These are delicious! I found out by accident that you can double the butter and banana and still make a delicious cookie. They turned out more cakey but crispy because of the butter. I was making them with my 3-year-old and intended to double the recipe and we doubled the banana and butter but then got distracted and followed the rest of the recipe without doubling it. I thought the batter looked thin but after refrigerating it it looked okay. When the cookies came out of the oven I realized our mistake but let them cool and they actually turned out great anyway!
Whoops! I’m glad they still turned out delicious!