I love baking cookies! But, oh, the guilt I feel every.single.time...because I can't just bake a couple of dozen and not eat any. I actually like to taste them while still warm and then again when they cool down. Okay, okay...I also try the dough! Here - I said it!

And then one day a good friend of mine asked me "Why are you poisoning your friends with that refined sugar and butter?" and that really made me feel guilty. I mean it's one thing to be responsible for yourself and another to carry the burden of giving crappy food to the people around you. So I decided when I have a possibility to bake healthy cookies I'll experiment with the original recipe and develop my own that tastes as good (if not better!).

And here I am, in Baku, where you can't really find any Organic food store, maybe just some products in the regular grocery stores. Luckily I had to travel with my team to Poland and I found everything I needed for healthy baking! I stuffed my bag to its limits and came back to Azerbaijan with 10kg heavier luggage, but super excited and ready to bake!

As I mentioned I started with the original recipe for chocolate chip cookies as a base. It's tested so many times and it always works miracles in the oven!

Ingredients:
150g melted Coconut Oil
1 large egg
2 dates
140g Coconut Sugar
1 tsp Bourbon Vanilla extract
150g mixed nuts (previously soaked and dried)
150g rice bran
75g almond meal
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 pinch of salt

Preparation:
Preheat oven to 180*C/350*F.
1) Melt the coconut oil in a small pan.
2) In a blender place the oil, egg and 2 dates, chopped. Blend until smooth.
3) Transfer mixture in a bowl and add vanilla and sugar. Mix with a hand mixer until sugar starts to absorb, but not too long - you don't want to incorporate too much air in the dough.
4) Chop the nuts roughly and roast them in a small pan over medium heat until they're crispy and you can feel the scent of freshly roasted nuts. You can add another pinch of salt to boost the sweet/salty contrast in the cookies. Set aside to cool.
5) In another bowl mix the dry ingredients and incorporate to the oil and sugar mixture, stirring with a wooden spoon until absorbed.
6) Add the roasted nuts. Stir.
7) Cover a baking tray with parchment paper. Using an ice-cream scoop make small, equally sized portions and place them evenly over the tray. You don't need to worry about leaving too much space between them, since they don't have flour and won't grow as much while baking. But still make sure there is enough.
8) Bake in the preheated oven for 8-12 minutes, depending on your liking. I baked mine 10-11' approximately and they turned out pretty good!
9) Take the cookies out of the oven and let cool for a couple of minutes. Before transferring them to a cooling rack, use the bottom of a glass or a small pan to press down the cookies and make them flat and crack a little on the sides. This is a step you will not want to miss since these cookies won't grow or spread as the classic ones. When you take them out of the oven they will look pretty much as the little balls you created with the ice-cream scoop and not so much as cookies.

Notes about the recipe:

1. The classic recipe calls for 80g of white sugar and 80g of muscovado sugar. Since we're using coconut sugar I reduced the total amount from 160g to 140g and put 2 dates instead. I found that better than using only coconut sugar. The reason is I did not want to have too much of a coconut flavor because I used coconut oil as well.

2. You can use any wholegrain or gluten-free flour of your liking, the total amount in the recipe is 225g. I used rice bran flour and it has a pretty strong taste, a lot of fiber and a very distinguishing consistency. To make your cookies taste a bit "milder" you can substitute a part of the bran with almond meal (flour). If you can'f find any you can make your own by blending some almonds in a food processor. Just make sure the ratio between bran and nut flour is in favor of the bran. Otherwise your cookies wont hold together as much and most likely will be dry and crumbly.

I hope you have fun baking and enjoy this healthy treat anytime you feel like eating something sweet!

XOXO,
Gabi K.

RECIPE: Super Healthy Guilt-free Cookies