There they are! A stack of beautiful golden brown cookies with chocolate chips scattered around then. You need a quick pick me up and the kid needs a snack too! You want to grab a cookie but then stop to think of the sugar and the butter and the calories and everything else that is wrong with the world! A bit dramatic? Well, of course….. When you are me everything in your life is dramatic! That’s how much drama I am surrounded by….Anyways, what if the said cookies don’t make you feel like a bad mom for indulging the afternoon’s sweet cravings? Wouldn’t you give it a try?
Lately, I have been experimenting a bit to create an egg-free version of chewey whole wheat chocolate which does not contain a ton of butter and at the same time is enjoyable as a quick guilt free snack. The original recipe called for 1 cup of butter and 2 eggs. Since my family doesn’t eat eggs they definitely had to be replaced. I used flax eggs and found that this worked remarkably well for cookies.
Next on the substitution list was butter. 1 cup of butter seemed quite a lot and I wanted an effective substitution. I tried a couple of options – the first of which was to replace half of the butter with an equal amount of avocado butter. That’s right, I whipped up an avocado and marveled as it looked like butter and used about a half cup of the avocado butter along with half cup of actual butter.
The result was a soft cookie but the cookie was more shortbread like and it hardly spread in the oven. I learnt later that butter makes the cookies spread a bit in the oven as opposed to avocado which is of no help in this department though it brings a nice moistness to the cookies. My cookies felt a bit lumpy and also crumbled more that I would have liked. Here is a picture to show you what I mean.
I will definitely use avocado butter for future baking experiments but not to bake cookies. The next time around, I used apple sauce to replace half of the butter and the results were definitely better. The cookies kept the cookie shape though they did not spread much in the oven. This can be overlooked considering the taste and texture of the cookies were quite good. They were moist, soft and chewey. They were a bit thick as opposed to normal cookies and smaller in size but that would be the price to pay for using wheat flour.
This batch was thoroughly enjoyed by the family and the 7 year old declared that these cookies were a lot better than the previous batch, making it a definite win š I believe that this recipe would be very easy to convert into a vegan recipe
What you need:
These measures make about 30 cookies.
- 3 cups Whole wheat flour – sifted and measured out
- 1 cup chocolate chips
- 1/2 cup room temperature butter
- 1/2 cup applesauce
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 2 tbsp Flax powder mixed well with 6 tbsp of warm water. Leave this aside for 5-10 minutes so that they develop a gel like consistency
- 1 tbsp corn starch
- 1 and 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp vanilla essence
How it’s done:
- Add all the dry ingredients to a bowl and keep the bowl aside
- Cream the butter and the applesauce until they are combined well
- Add the sugar, flax gel and the vanilla essence to the butter mixture and mix well
- Add the dry ingredients to the butter and sugar mixture and fold gently until well combined. Towards the end of the mixing process, you can go in with your hands to bring the dough together. If you find the mixture is a bit dry, add milk by the tablespoon to bring the cookie dough together. I used about 2 tbsps milk extra
- Once the dough is formed, cover it with a plastic wrap and refrigerate it for at least 30 minutes
- Pre-heat the oven to 375 F
- Line the baking sheets with parchment paper
- Take the refrigerated dough and using a tablespoons measure about 1.5 tbsps worth of dough into a cookie ball and place it on the baking sheet
- Gently flatten the cookie ball
Pop the baking sheets into the oven and bake for about 10 minutes / until the cookies start turning golden brown.
Let the cookies cool a bit before you can enjoy a bite. The cookies taste amazing when they are warm!
The cookies keep good at room temperate for about 3 days. My batch was consumed within 3 days. Please note that since there are no preservatives in this cookies, it is better not to leave them outside for more than 3 days.
The Kitchen Project 