Tasty Tuesday

I like to try a new clean recipe every week.  Yup, that’s living it up at the TTHR House!

Since it’s week 2 of Spring Break, I thought I would make something sweet yet “clean”.  So it is chocolate chip cookies!  What I really want it to be is a tall frosted glass of beer, glass of wine, hell scotch will do right about now!  Did I mention it is WEEK 2?

I found this recipe at www.thegraciouspantry.com.  I have been following this site for some time now but this is the first time I have chosen one of her recipes.

So here goes:

Clean Eating Chocolate Chip Cookies

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.

Tools
Food processor
Large mixing bowl
Spatula

Ingredients
2/3 cup almonds
1/3 cup cooked oatmeal
3 tbsp. honey
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/8 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 cup grain sweetened chocolate chips (or dairy free chips)

Note: If you don’t want to use the chocolate chips, they could be very easily substituted with raisins, nuts or dried fruits of any kind.

Directions

Step 1 – Mix everything except the chocolate chips in the food processor. You should have a nice wet, sticky dough when you’re done.

Step 2 – Using your spatula, scrape dough into your mixing bowl and mix in chocolate chips.

Step 3 – Spoon onto a parchment lined cookie sheet.

Step 4 – Bake for 20 minutes.

First off, I have to say that the ingredient list was so easy and I had all of it in the pantry.  Secondly, the only prepping I had to do was make some oatmeal and let it cool which is easy peasy.  From there, it was a breeze to put this together. 

Here’s where things got a little sticky for me.  The first batch was put on the baking sheet as directed – in spoonfuls.  I am not sure if my dough was too thick but the cookies never truly “flattened out” and after 20 minutes in the oven, they were brown on top and not cooked all the way through. 

A little disappointing on the presentation portion but hey, I ate it any way and passed one off to the kids too.  We all gave the flavour two thumbs up!  So off I went again to make another batch and see if I can get a picture perfect cookie.  

Not so great, doughy in the middle

This time when I went to put them on the baking sheet, I gave them a little flattening out with the back of the spoon and my finger (hey, can’t beat cookie dough that tastes that good and doesn’t have any eggs in it!)  I put them in the oven and 20 minutes later, fantastic looking cookies that I knew would taste as good as it looked!

What I do have to mention is that if you are expecting the Toll House variety of cookie with the melt in your mouth feeling, these aren’t those kinds of cookies (with the exception of the chocolate chips).  I love hearty, chewy and wholesome cookies and this is that kind of cookie.