Simple Chocolate Chunk Cookies
These delightful chocolate chunk cookies are soft in the middle and crisp on the outside. They’re made with delicious fibre-packed whole foods, and sweetened with maple syrup. Instead of oil or butter, these are made with healthy whole fats from almonds.
I developed this recipe using some lovely Prodigy chocolate bars which were kindly sent to me. Prodigy chocolate is made with natural ingredients, sweetened with coconut sugar and comes wrapped in plastic-free compostable packaging. 100% my vibe!
Like many of my recipes, this one begins with a humble mashed banana and my advice to you is to give it a good massage before you remove the skin. Roll it and squidge it around in your hands to soften it and then when you pop it out into your bowl, you’ll already have a lovely smooth puree.
This recipe also calls for almond flour, which is something you can easily make if you have a high powered blender. Using blanched almonds will give you a smoother flour, while whole skin-on almonds will pack more nutrients and add a little bite. All you need to do is weigh out 50g of almonds and whizz them in your blender. Be careful you don’t blend for too long otherwise you will end up with nut butter. Blend for a few seconds, stop, shake it all about a bit and then repeat. Keep doing this until you have a fine flour. The same applies to oat flour. 120g of oats in the blender. Magic.
Ingredients
(Makes 10 cookies)
1 ripe banana, mashed
1/4 cup smooth almond butter
1/4 cup maple syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla extract or 1/4 teaspoon vanilla powder
1/2 cup almond flour (50g)
1 cup + 2tbsp oat flour (120g)
1 teaspoon baking powder
Pinch sea salt
2 bars (70g) Prodigy chocolate chopped into chunks
Method
Preheat your oven to 180°C/170°C for electric/350°F/Gas 4/ and prepare a baking tray with a silicone baking sheet or parchment paper.
In a large bowl, mix the mashed banana and almond butter until well combined.
Next, add the maple syrup, vanilla and almond flour and mix will.
Sift the oat flour into the bowl. It can be a bit lumpy so it’s best not to skip this step. (Don’t discard any larger pieces of oats if you blended your own. Just mix them in.) Then add the baking powder and salt and mix well.
The mixture will be sticky. Leave it to sit for about 5 minutes while you chop your chocolate into chunks.
Mix your chocolate chunks in, leaving a small handful aside to add to the top of the cookies, if you wish.
Divide your mixture into 10 even sized dollops on your baking tray.
Fill a small bowl with water and use it to wet your hand. Now carefully shape each dollop of mixture into a flat round cookie shape. They should be roughly 6cm across and about 1cm thick. The easiest way is to make a spider shape over the dough with your wet hand, shaping the edges with your fingertips until you have a round shape. Then wet your hand again, flatten it and then gently press down on the surface. Repeat until you have shaped all 10 cookies.
Press any extra chocolate chunks into the tops of the cookies and then bake for 12-14 minutes, until the cookies are turning golden brown on the edges. Leave to cool on the tray for 5 minutes and then transfer to a cooling rack.
These are delicious warm or cold and you can store them in an airtight container at room temperature for at least 3 days. Alternatively store any extras in the freezer.