A.K.A A much healthier and tastier alternative to most chocolate chip cookie recipes. This one has no refined sugars, butter or milk, and tastes like Christmas morning.
*I would recommend this recipe to anyone with minor gluten sensitives since it uses Spelt rather than whole wheat. (Spelt has gluten, but many people don’t have the same issues with Spelt gluten as with traditional wheat gluten; so give it a try!).
A few years ago, sitting alone in my living room watching thrillers on Netflix, I had the sudden urge to bake. Maybe it’s because I was watching Stephen King’s Thinner (Not that that makes any sense), but I really wanted to make chocolate chip cookies. The only problem was I didn’t have a any butter, eggs, or milk. Although, I didn’t really have the desire to bake with milk or butter anyway (Slightly lactose intolerant here).
If this were the 90’s I would scour my mother’s recipes until I found something yummy looking I could modify. Then when the cookies came out of the oven I would taste the tiny chocolate abominations and smack myself over the head with the spatula for lacking any baking skills or the know-how to modify a recipe. “Why did I replace the milk and butter with tap water?” “Why did my mother let a 10 year old bake cookies on her own?”
Fortunately, now that the internet is a thing, I was able to do a bit of digging and I found a recipe I liked the look of here:
https://sweetandnatural.wordpress.com/2009/04/30/walnut-chocolate-chip-spelt-cookies/
No milk, no eggs, no butter and no whole wheat flour… instead: Spelt! I didn’t want walnuts spoiling my chocolaty taste so i left them out altogether. Also, I figured the molasses in the original recipe was unnecessary so I left it out too (I was right).
Here’s the slightly modified recipe I went with:
1 cup Whole Spelt flour
(Make sure it’s whole Spelt flour, not light Spelt flour or your cookies will turn into Pan-cookies; a.k.a. flat cookies)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup Sucanat
(If you’re unfamiliar with this, it’s basically just unrefined, pure dried sugar cane juice and it’s delicious)
1/4 teaspoon salt
(I have never actually measured this; just sprinkled a bit in)
1/3 cup maple syrup
(You can substitute 1/3 cup honey for the maple syrup here and it tastes awesome)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup olive oil
1/3 cup chocolate chips
The Part Where You Put It In The Oven
Preheat the oven to 350°F.
The original recipe calls for you to mix the dry ingredients separate from the wet, but this is such a quick recipe it’s not necessary and only one mixing bowl is needed.
Once all the ingredients are mixed, add the chocolate chips in (I have never measured this either; just gone by how ‘chocolaty’ I was feeling at the time).
Grease the pan with coconut oil
(liquid form or solid, both work) so you don’t have to use Crisco (Which is a little too hydrogenated for my liking).
Place a bunch of adorable spoonfuls of the cookie dough on the pan (12 – 16 depending on cookie size) and bake for 10 minutes.
Take the cookies out at 10 minutes and test with a toothpick. If your oven is slower than mine it might take a few more minutes, but generally I find 10 minutes is perfect.
Once the cookies are done give them a few minutes to cook and voila! These are literally the best cookies I have ever tasted, and they retain their awesome softness even when they’ve cooled. I’ve made them at least 30 times over the last four years and they taste wonderful every time.
CALORIE INFO
The amount of calories per cookie really depends on the exact ingredients you use and the number of cookies you fit on a pan, but here’s what I’ve calculated to give you a rough idea:
1 cup Whole Spelt flour (480 calories)
1 teaspoon baking powder (2 calories)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda (0 calories)
1/4 cup Sucanat (180 calories)
1/4 teaspoon salt (0 calories)
1/3 cup maple syrup (280 calories)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (12 calories)
1/4 cup olive oil (477.5 calories)
1/3 cup chocolate chips (450 calories)
So…
The whole batch is worth 1881.5 calories, which means:
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- For a batch of 12 cookies, each cookie is only 157 calories
- For a batch of 16 cookies, each cookie is only 118 calories
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Compare that to one Tim Hortons Chocolate Chunk cookie, (240 calories) one Subway Chocolate Chip cookie (210 calories), or a Kirkland Chocolate Chip cookie from Costco (210 calories), all of which are loaded with butter and refined sugars, then the homemade Spelt cookies are definitely the best and tastiest option.
So you’re totally entitled to have more than one 🙂
Enjoy!
Blog Comments
Luis Dehaemers
August 16, 2016 at 10:48 am
yeah, really nice article 🙂