In my home we have banned all things dairy.
That means no regular ice cream, no cow’s milk with our cereal, and absolutely no mac and cheese for the littles.
Don’t get me wrong, we love cheese. If I could eat it every day I would.
But after suffering from terrible hormonal breakouts on my jaw line for a year straight I had to reevaluate my diet.
I found that dairy was the main culprit in these constantly painful flare-ups on my skin. I also found that large amounts of caffeine and sugar also contributed to my breakouts but that is for another post.
So, since I couldn’t eat dairy, we made an agreement that we would not have it in the home. This was to protect me from making bad decisions when I felt weak in my cravings. We also felt that if dairy made me flare up then there can be a gene in one of our girls that could also cause them to flare up as well. Maybe not now when they are young, but maybe when they are older. Maybe not where it can be physically noticeable but perhaps internally. Either way, if it wasn’t healthy for mama then we sure weren’t feeding it to the family.
So, for this recipe I used coconut milk from the can but if you are not a coconut fan (which I wasn’t once before) you can use almond milk or what ever suits you. We use spelt four instead of regular all-purpose flour. I love this flour (although it is not gluten-free) and I have a whole post about the health benefits of this flour. It can be pretty tough to find this flour at your regular grocery store (this usually can be found at a Trader Joes or Whole Foods). You can also use whole-wheat flour if you wanted to find the next best thing that was more available in stores.
Most of the time I would sweeten my desserts with blended dates and honey only, using no sugar at all. But today I wanted to treat myself to something a little above semi sweet. Do you ever get those days when you just want that sweet tooth satisfied, all health stuff aside? So I chose to bake with vegan chocolate chip cookies and I dusted off the cobb webs from the unopened bag of brown sugar that I dug out from the back of my pantry.
This recipe calls for no egg. Which is great. And I love that we used coconut oil instead of butter. While your eating the cookies you really can’t be mad at yourself. The only bad thing is the tiny bit of sugar that is in it and the vegan chocolate chips!
I always find myself being extra creative and throwing in a whole bunch of things like chia seeds, walnuts, and cinnamon. Anything healthy that I can sneak in to pack in an extra nutritional punch. You can experiment with this recipe and see what you can get away with. The goal for me was to satisfy my sweet tooth with a partially guilt free cookie.
The teaspoon of cream of tarter will make the cookies spongy and cake like. So if you don’t want a cake like cookie, just remove the cream of tarter from the recipe. A voila! A semi sweet, healthy-ish, guilt free, vegan chocolate chip cookie recipe!
Let me know how it came out for you. I hope you all enjoy!
Xoxo,
Keri Kavali
Vegan Chocolate Chip Cake Cookies
Prep: 10 min
Cook Time: 20 min
Serves: 15-20 cookies
Ingredients:
½ cup coconut oil
1/2 cup brown sugar
¼ cup coconut milk or almond milk
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 cups spelt flour (this flour is hard to find so you can use whole wheat flour instead)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon cream of tarter (this is optional. I use this to make my cookies spongy like cake)
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup vegan chocolate chip cookies
Directions
- Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees
- In a bowl thoroughly mix together the brown sugar, coconut milk, vanilla extract, almond extract, and coconut oil.
- Add in the dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, baking powder, cream of tarter, and chocolate chip cookies)
- Mix thoroughly
- If you have any other extra ingredients to personalize your cookies, this is the time to do it. Most of the time I will throw in some chia seeds, almonds, walnuts, and cinnamon just to get as much health benefits I can get in it as possible.
- Grab a spoon and use to scoop enough of the cookie dough to roll into small balls the tablespoon. Place the balls on a ungreased cookie sheet or if all you have is aluminum you can use that but be sure to grease it first. I use coconut oil.
- Bake for 10 minutes
- Tip: if you like your cookies with a little harder then you can stick with the original recipe which will provide you with a crumbly dough that you can press together into a ball.
Note: If you like your cookies to be soft and spongy like cake, which I do, just add a little more coconut milk. The dough with be a little light and runny. Not like pancake mix but it won’t mold into a ball. It would be something you just scoop from the bowl and dollop in the baking sheet.
