Friends, meet your new favorite cookie.
We all know that chocolate chip cookies are a classic – an icon of the cookie world. Whether you bake them from a package or from scratch, they are bound to be devoured. But, sadly, they aren’t the healthiest snack. With loads of sugar, this childhood staple can raise and crash your insulin levels in minutes, leaving you wanting more sugar and craving a nap. Could a healthier (and still delicious) version of this cookie exist? Perhaps one that was both gluten-free and dairy free? I set out on a journey to find out, and what I found blew my little mind.
I knew there had to be a healthier way to produce these delicious morsels, so I went on a quest for the most delicious, healthy and easy recipe I could find that also didn’t sacrifice flavor. Turns out there are about ten billion different ways to make a chocolate chip/chunk cookie; white flour, wheat flour – white sugar, brown sugar – one egg, two eggs. But I just want to make a gooey, chocolaty cookie with crisp edges. Is that too much to ask? For a simple cookie, this one sure can be complicated.
I wanted a cookie with either no flour or an alternate flour (maybe almond), and one that didn’t require two full cups of sugar. I was wary whether this Holy Grail of cookies (get it?) even existed. And then, at some point during my search I found information that suggested, to my surprise (and delight), maybe chocolate chunk cookies didn’t need flour at all.
I will admit, I was wary that this type of cookie could be made without any kind of flour base. But as soon as I mixed the ingredients together (all whopping six of them), I knew it was true. What emerged was a dough that mimicked traditional chocolate cookie dough, both by sight and feel. Now the true test was to bake those babies and see if they held their ground as my potential new favorite cookie.
Just look at those tiny little nuggets of perfection.
I was careful not to over bake them, since they can cook more quickly than traditional cookies. After eight minutes they emerged from the oven looking golden, melty and delicious, just like a chocolate chunk cookie should. As they rested and cooled all the cracks and dimples that tell me a cookie is worth eating started to appear.
The end result was a cookie that was not too sugary, but sweet; not too crisp, but crispy enough. And because the chocolate was chopped and not in chip form, the different-sized pieces allowed for the chocolate flavor to be spread evenly throughout the cookie. I’m the person who always eats all the chunks out of the Ben & Jerry’s, or the chocolate chips out of the cookie, feeling that the ice cream or the dough is just a vehicle to get the more delicious parts into my belly. My family hates me for this, so not having to pick apart a cookie for once is revolutionary.
So here’s to your new favorite gluten-free, dairy-free easy to make chocolate chunk cookie. I would raise my glass of almond milk to cheers with you, but I already drank it all with my cookies.
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- 1 cup almond butter (creamy or chunky)
- 1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
- 1 egg, beaten
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1 cup freshly chopped dark chocolate (about one 3.5 ounce bar)
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Chop chocolate into different-sized chunks. Set aside.
- Crack egg into a medium-sized bowl and whisk until uniformly yellow.
- Add remaining ingredients, except chocolate. Combine.
- Add chocolate and fold into mixture.
- Place teaspoon-sized, flattened balls of dough about 2 inches apart onto a parchment-lined baking sheet.
- Bake for 8 minutes (do not over-bake, as cookies will harden while cooling). Let cookies cool on baking sheet before transferring to a cooling rack. Cookies can be stored in an airtight container for about 3 days.
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