Healthy(ish) Cookies

I figured since I shared a healthier version of a brownie a few weeks ago, it was due time for me to share a healthier version of a cookie. To be perfectly honest I was hoping to have two recipes to share with you, but considering the house was almost set on fire while attempting to make the apple pie meringues, I only have one. This latest baking experience proved to be way more exciting than my last, in part due to almost setting the house on fire, but also because it involved my sister-in-law (Jillian), pizza & wine … a pretty awesome Friday night if you ask me. These cookies I’ll be sharing with you are seriously good, end of story, and I give full credit to two people – Jillian for finding the recipe and thesmoothielover.com for coming up with the recipe.

I’ll go ahead and warn you that these cookies are made with avocado BUT I promise they don’t taste like avocado. I actually swear, which is even better than promising, so I hope you’ll trust me. I had made lemon pudding in the past using avocado and dates and it turned out to be quite delicious, so the avocado didn’t deter me at all, but I can imagine it might make some of you a little hesitant.

These cookies were so tasty that I quickly whipped up another batch the following night. I mean, I had 1.5 avocados left and they were just going to go bad so what was I to do? I’ll admit that I added a few more dark chocolate chips the second night AND I let them cool longer, and I swear they were even better … so good that I may have even had a couple for breakfast.

HEALTHY AVOCADO CHOCOLATE COOKIES (makes 10 cookies)

(recipe adapted from thesmoothielover.com)

INGREDIENTS ~

• 3/4 cup avocado flesh (very ripe, but not brown) ***
• 1/2 cup coconut sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup dark cocoa powder
• 1/4 cup dark chocolate chips (or maybe a few more)
• 1/2 tsp baking soda

DIRECTIONS ~

• Preheat oven to 350°F.
• Using a hand mixer or food processor, mix together avocado and coconut sugar until smooth.
• Add egg and mix until combined.
• Slowly add dark cocoa powder & baking soda while mixing (mix until combined).
• Stir in dark chocolate chips.
• Line baking sheet(s) with parchment paper and place spoonfuls of batter onto sheet. The batter’s pretty sticky so you probably won’t get perfect drops of dough on your sheets (I surely didn’t as you can see in the pic below. A little funky looking maybe, but definitely not funky tasting).

• Flatten each with back of spoon.
• Bake for 8-10 minutes (cookies should come off parchment paper pretty easily at this point).
• Let cool. It’s recommended that you store them in the fridge in an airtight container overnight, but who’s that patient?

*** My local grocer didn’t have very ripe avocados at the time, so the ones we used were still pretty firm. This made it really difficult to blend the avocados up completely since we were using a hand mixer. I even ended up with some unblended avocado in one of my cookies (see pic below). I promise it was still delicious, it just startled me for a minute.

As for those apple pie meringues, I’ll leave you with a picture that pretty much sums up why I’m not sharing that recipe with you (this was the good pan too; the other one was so burned that I had to get the Scrub Daddy out and it basically ruined him). I determined that I might need a little practice making meringue, as well as a little practice with oven chemistry. Jillian & I may tackle the recipe again though, so I might be able to share it with you someday 🙂 Hope everyone has a great week!