Let me head you off at the beginning, I’m not following a paleo diet.
Truth be told I can’t even say the word “paleo” correctly. I thought it was pronounced as pa-lay-o, emphasis on the lay. One day my husband corrected me. It’s pay-lee-oh, you know, like the era before the dinosaurs? Well, I have a mental block now so I still say it wrong, every single time, and my husband kindly corrects me every single time. I swear I’m actually an intelligent person and can be taught. Just not this time. 😉
Yesterday my girlfriend asked me where I get all my recipes from. Well, some I create and the others I dig up from a variety of sources. This one I bumped into online when I wasn’t even looking for anything. I was on Instagram the other night and I saw that Jessica from How Sweet Eats made Monique’s (Ambitious Kitchen) recipe for these cookies twice in one week. She said that they are easy to make and so good. I’m a big fan of Jessica so I knew that I had to check this out.
I’ve never baked with coconut sugar or coconut flour before and I’ve just started using coconut oil and almond flour in a couple of recipes. So what we’ve got here is a recipe that is almost completely foreign to me. That’s daunting. But let’s think about this rationally. We’re talking about chocolate chip cookies here. How hard could it be? It turns out that Jessica was right and this recipe is not hard at all. It probably took me longer to find the coconut sugar at my store than it took to make these cookies. Seriously.
If you’ve never worked with some of these ingredients before, let me give you a brief tour. Starting from the top of the below picture and working your way down, you’ve got coconut oil, coconut flour, coconut sugar, and almond flour. Since I’m a newbie with these ingredients I won’t pretend to know the nutritional benefits of these ingredients. However, I do know this… most people say that those are healthy ingredients (of course the term “healthy” is subjective). Plus, the coconut flour and almond flour are great gluten-free alternatives to wheat flour.
At the end of the day, I was curious to see what those ingredients do to a basic chocolate chip cookie and this was sort of like paleo cooking 101. The attorney part of me feels compelled to say that if you follow a special diet, then please check all ingredients of the recipe to make sure they work for your special needs. Just because I think that this is a healthier option for me does not mean that this is the right recipe for you.
I’m glad that I decided to try out some new ingredients because Jessica was right again. These cookies are SO good. They taste like chocolate chip cookies with a slightly earthly crunchy texture. They are soft on the inside and crunchy on the outside (my favorite way to enjoy a chocolate chip cookie). I don’t taste coconut from the coconut oil and flour. Coconut sugar really doesn’t taste anything like coconut, so no odd flavor from that either. I don’t taste almonds from the almond meal. All I know is that I couldn’t stop eating them. AND I didn’t feel guilty about it.
Every year my entire family goes to Lake George, NY for a long weekend in the summer. If you’re familiar with my blog then you know that I bring lots of baked goodies for my family to enjoy. My fam makes for good guinea pigs. Every year we do a chocolate chip cookie contest where I bake two kinds of cookies and then everyone eats loads of cookies and decides which one is the best.
Side note, last year my husband got in on the game and we had the now infamous cinnamon rolls/sticky bun contest. (And worse than that, I forgot the chocolate chip cookies at home. Who does that? Thank goodness for all the cinnamon buns.)
I’m thinking that I definitely need to make these paleo cookies as one of the contenders for the chocolate chip cookie contest this year. I’m curious to see what my family will think and if they even realize that they’re eating a paleo/gluten-free baked goodie. Yes, these are that awesome.
Paleo Chocolate Chunk Cookies Recipe
(Makes bout 13 cookies)
Ingredients:
- 1 egg, slightly beaten
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/4 cup coconut oil, melted and cooled
- 1/2 cup coconut sugar
- 1 cup almond flour
- 1/4 cup coconut flour
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 cup 60% bittersweet chocolate chips
- coarse sea salt, for sprinkling
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
- If your coconut oil is solid, warm it up in the microwave until it’s a liquid. Make sure that the coconut oil is cool after this process so you don’t scramble the egg in the next step!
- In a large bowl, mix together the beaten egg, melted and cooled coconut oil, coconut sugar, and vanilla extract.
- Add in the almond flour, coconut flour, and baking soda, and mix everything together well until it forms a dough.
- Fold in chocolate chips.
- Roll the dough into balls, about 1 heaping tablespoon each. I used the OXO good grips medium cookie scoop. Then gently flatten the dough with your hand.
- Bake them in the preheated oven for 11 to 13 minutes, or until edges are slightly golden brown.
- When you remove the cookies from the oven, sprinkle a little bit of coarse sea salt on top of them.
- Allow the cookies to cool on cookie sheet for about 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to finishing cooling.
Slightly adapted from: Ambitious Kitchen
Here are some other great gluten-free goodies.
Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies
Flourless Chocolate and Peanut Butter Fudgy Brownies
Peanut Butter and Chocolate Cereal Bars
These are beautiful! I’m so happy that you loved them 🙂 Made my day!
Monique, thank you so much! That means so much to me. 🙂 I appreciate you stopping by!
Very good cookie. Nice and chewy. (I added unsweetened coconut flakes and cocoa) I will definitely make this a regular recipe to make. Thanks!