Happily Whole

Living well from the inside out

Grain Free Almond Chocolate Chip Cookies

You'll notice, if you haven't already, that my recipes are heavier in the bakery, snack, breakfast categories than in meals and fully plated presentations. That's for no other reasons than these:

  • I love baking and experimenting with lots of fun flours and other ingredients to create nutritious alternatives to what's normally non-nourishing. 
  • I love eating bakery goods and I spend a lot of my day snacking. Therefore, I have been intrigued with making over recipes that offer the girls and I heathy morsels to munch on throughout the day. 

Because of my baking obsession, when we are out and about eating our homemade foods a common question I hear is....

"YOU eat THAT?"

Ummm...yes. I do and I enjoy it! 

When someone sees me eating or giving one of my girls a cookie, a cupcake, a muffin or anything else that doesn't appear 'healthy', it doesn’t seem to match my living well ways. But, you see, eating well means so much more than simply what some might refer to as rabbit food! Our bodies need FAT, calories and carbohydrates to function properly. There is nothing I cringe at more than a carb-free diet mentality. I get grain free (sorta), gluten free (when advantageous) and I certainly get purging all the processed junk. But, to eliminate entire food groups containing nourishing elements is simply insane!

Oh and the other eating insanity I wish to ‘fix’ here at Happily Whole is ‘failure to enjoy food’! That, to me, is a lifestyle fiasco. We need to eat—multiple times a day. God gave us bread…He gave us a life to sustain…a life He wants us to enjoy. So, following that logic, why not enjoy life with the nourishment we eat all day long.

With that, I will step away from my soapbox and return to the inquiry at hand, ‘YOU eat THAT?’. The answer is YES, I eat food that looks, feels and tastes good to me. I give the same kinds of food to my girls. Here’s how this works:

  • We eat REAL foods, unprocessed and highly nutrient dense.
  • We use REAL ingredients to make our own bakery items. So when you see us eating something that looks like a real indulgence, it IS A REAL-FOOD INDULGENCE from the time that goes into it to the ingredients used to make it.
  • We eat foods our bodies need which include fats, healthy carbohydrates and both animal and vegetarian proteins. Not to mention a plethora of plant-based nutrients every day.
  • We do not avoid any particular food group however, we do avoid non-real-food groups such as foods containing dyes and/or chemicals and have been processed, refined and/or bleached.

So, there you have it! I love to bake. I love to eat often. I love a little bit of sweetness every day. And, all the while I am a REAL FOOD Foodie!

These almond flour cookies fall into the ‘YOU eat THAT?’ category. I started experimenting more with almond flour for its nutritional profile in comparison to traditional flours. Just to mention a few: Vitamin E, omega 3s, plant proteins, multiple nut-common minerals. Almond meal or flour definitely bakes up differently and offers a unique yet pleasing flavor. But we have developed a liking to it here at the Oldham home.

Then, considering the lack of white/bleached sugars and less favorable fats, they offer a nice, mildly sweet treat. Try them and see for yourself!

 

These make the perfect mini-chocolate chip cookie for a mid-afternoon craving or an after school snack. The almond meal makes them safe for those avoiding grains while giving them good fats and high protein content for being a cookie. They are one of my favorites to offer as samples to clients when proving eating well is also quite tasty! 

Ingredients

  • 2 ½ cups almond flour*
  • ½ teaspoon Celtic sea salt
  • ½ teaspoon baking soda
  • ¼ cup organic canola oil or organic unrefined coconut oil in liquid state**
  • ¼ cup all natural almond butter
  • 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
  • ½ cup pure maple syrup (if you like a sweeter cookie you can add 2 to 3 tablespoons coconut sugar)
  • 1 cup dark chocolate chips***

Recipe Instructions

  • Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Prepare cookie sheets with parchment paper.
  • Combine all dry ingredients and whisk together to incorporate well.
  • Stir wet ingredients (oil, butter, vanilla, syrup and sugar if using) together in another bowl.
  • Mix wet ingredients into dry ingredients. Stir in chocolate chips or pieces.
  • Scoop dough with small cookie scoop and place on parchment about 1 ½ inch apart. Bake for approximately 9 to 11 minutes. Cool on cooling rack and serve!
  • I freeze any cookies we will not eat within a day or two. Almond flour, like whole nuts, stay fresh better when refrigerated or frozen. 

Recipe Notes

*I love Honeyville almond flour because the texture is nice for baking. Buy Honeyville almond flour here

**I have made these with both canola and coconut oil. While canola seemed to bake a bit better in this recipe, I far prefer the nutrition of coconut oil. Just be sure to buy refined if you don't want them to taste like coconut. Also be sure, when baking with coconut oil in its liquid state (by heating slightly to melt) that your other ingredients are at room temperature so the coconut oil does not turn into solid bits in your batter

Buy Coconut oil here

***I often use Enjoy Life chocolate chips. However, I also like chopping my own 72% dark chocolate bars to mix into cookie batters.

Buy Enjoy Life Chips here. 

 

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