Chocolate chip cookies are one of my weaknesses. I admit that freely. I learned to bake them when I was less than 10 years old and they are connected with so many of my happy childhood memories. I learned to bake them at home in my mom's kitchen and I baked them regularly until the day I moved out. I can remember one time baking chocolate chip cookies late at night with friends and then just eating the cookie dough. I also remember my best friend bringing me home baked chocolate chip cookies on my 17th birthday. At my bridal shower, I was even given a Tupperware tub full of chocolate chip cookie dough as a gift and I still think of that as one of the most memorable gifts I ever received! As an adult, I've baked them for my friends, brought them to church potlucks and bake sales, taught my kids how to bake them and lately I've also been.... modifying the recipe.
I've been trying to healthify my chocolate chip cookie recipe. I recognize that a food that's made of sugar, butter, white flour, and chocolate chips, has little nutritive value. If you only eat these a few times a year, that's not a problem for you. It's a nice treat to occasionally indulge in. If you're like me, and you've been baking them weekly for as long as you've been able to read and do math, the unhealthy set of ingredients can be a real problem.
I've been trying simple switches that will make these yummy cookies a little better for your health. I'll know I'm successful when my kids like them and can't tell that there are substitutions, i.e. funny ingredients, in them. My kids usually just take one look and then ask, hesitatingly, "What's in them?"
Here's the latest batch of dough that I made with stevia, freshly ground whole wheat, peanut butter powder, coconut, and butter. I always seem to have one ingredient that I'm not proud of including. And just so you know, I did bake these up into cookies. Unfortunately, I forgot to snap a photo after they came out of the oven and now they're gone.
I spent a bunch of time researching sugars and concluded that whole, pure stevia seems to be the most natural sugar so I made a special trip to Trader Joe's and bought a teeny, tiny little bottle of 100% pure Organic Stevia Extract.
Stevia is supposed to be 30-40x sweeter than sugar, so I was able to use just a couple of tablespoons for this cookie dough. It came out okay, but reducing the amount of dry ingredients like that really altered my dough. So I had to add more flour. I didn't want the dough to get heavy with all of that whole wheat, so I also added a little bit of ground flax and also a lot of freshly ground oatmeal. I also used dehydrated eggs, in case anyone wanted to snack on the plain dough without having to worry about salmonella.
I also made the mistake of purchasing my chocolate chips at Trader Joe's without pouring over the list of ingredients, so I was disappointed to find that the Trader Joe's chips are more "sugar chips" than chocolate chips. I am a total chocolate chip snob and usually only buy chocolate chips that list chocolate as the first ingredient.
These cookies came out kind of weird. I usually modify my recipes and I like my dough to have a certain look to the texture of it. I think I achieved that as best as I could, but the final product still left a lot to be desired.
For one thing, the Stevia extract gave the cookies a strange aftertaste, that seemed fresh, kind of like menthol or breath freshener. Some of you might enjoy that; you might like that winter fresh feeling after eating a cookie, but I didn't. Also these cookies didn't seem to spread or melt like regular chocolate chip cookies. They retained their original ball shape and didn't spread out even though I used butter, so something must have been off with the butter to sugar ration that prevented spreading. The texture seemed really chewy and thick to me. I wouldn't describe it as cakey as can sometimes happen; it was more of a biscuity kind of texture. They were edible if you can get past the winterfresh factor, but it just wasn't what I was going for.
So I'm not sure that I'll be using stevia again. Next time I plan to try using half sugar and half stevia and we'll see if that makes a difference. Of course, next time I'm also planning to use coconut oil instead of butter. I meant to do that with these, but I was so excited about the stevia that I forgot all about the tub of coconut oil that's sitting in the pantry.
My husband asked, "If you want your cookies to be that healthy, why don't you just go eat some vegetables?" He has a point, but sometimes, I'm just craving a cookie and I want it to be good for me, dang it!
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