{Caveman} Chocolate Chip Cookies

{This is a picture-heavy post, and I thank you in advance for overlooking my poor lighting, half-painted walls, and missing cabinet doors, as we are in the process of remodeling!}

I mentioned the other day that my husband is getting bored with our new eating habits. A few days ago he was lamenting his lack of sweets, and how he was missing chocolate chip cookies the most. I smiled and told him I'd make him some. "Not with anything weird in it," was his response. He even demanded to see the ingredient list before I made them. Ha! I denied him that request, and scoured the internets for a Paleo chocolate chip cookie recipe. BakerGal did a great comparision of 6 paleo chocolate chip cookie recipes. In the end I opted to try a recipe found on Fast Paleo. The recipe called for blanched almond flour, which is somewhat expensive, and I have yet to purchase. Fortunately, I happened to have raw almonds on hand, so I went to work making some flour. Almond flour is different from almond meal in that the skins are removed before grinding. This is done through blanching.






First, take a bowl of raw almonds.










Boil water on the stove, and pour it over the almonds. Let is sit for about a minute. If it sits too long, the almonds will get soggy.







I found that the next steps were very important. Drain the almonds. Rinse them in cool water, drain, and rinse again. I "rinsed" my almonds in a collander. I would recommend draining them in a collander, and then putting them back in the bowl to "rinse."






I turned the almonds onto a towel, and patted dry. (I'll skip the drying part next time, too. Dry almonds are harder to peel.) I also advise enlisting a helper. Or two.

 This step took me quite awhile. I found that the wet almonds peeled very easily, and had they all been that easy I would have been done in no time. Unfortunately, I had attempted to blanch quite a few almonds, and I dried them too much. I seriously spent an hour peeling almonds. While I will say that it was worth it in the end, I will never spend so much time doing it again. Let them say a little damp. :)




I let my peeled almonds dry, and piled them into my trusty Vitamix. My machine came with two containers: the traditional container, perfect for smoothies and making nut butters; and a "dry container", perfect for grinding. I haven't used the dry container much in the past, but after yesterday I can tell it will be getting much more counter time in the near future!



After a little processing, I had flour! I transferred the flour into a mason jar, careful not to waste any of the golden goodness, and pulled out the rest of the ingredients for my cookies. Each batch makes about a dozen cookies. I made one, sampled them with the kids, and then made another batch for us to share with the Hubby and the in-laws.





 Each batch requires blanched almond flour (preferrably organic), baking soda, Real Salt, coconut oil (I used the elite Tropical Traditions brand--review coming soon!), vanilla extract, maple syrup, an egg, and Enjoy Life chocolate chips (gluten, dairy, nut & soy-free!).



The first and most tedious step here is to sift out the flour. Even after quick processing in the Vitamix, there were some bigger almond pieces mixed in, and some of the flour clumped together a bit, so we sifted for a few minutes.

I set the coconut oil on the stove to melt, while my helpers mixed the dry ingredients.






 My older helper cracked the egg (notice our compost bin for the eggshell behind her!), and then we added the other wet ingredients.
During our second batch I only had half of the required maple syrup, so I added a little agave nectar.



We stirred the dry ingredients into the wet. Finally, we stirred in the chocolate chips. This batter is a little more runny than your typical chocolate chip cookie batter, so we put it in the fridge for half an hour while the oven preheated.



Once that was complete I was in a bit of a hurry to get the cookies baking before Hubby came home. I quickly dropped spoonfuls onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. The original instrustions say to gently push down on the cookies with a spatula after 5 minutes in the oven. I didn't think this was necessary the second time, and those cookies browned much faster, so I think I'll go ahead and flatten them a bit next time. Then we returned them to the oven for another 5 minutes or so--just until they started to look a little golden brown. I set these out to cool, but we sampled them before long. I really could not believe how amazing these were. I think I prefer them to a conventional chocolate chip cookie, and even the Hubby was impressed (I'm hoping he'll review them for you soon)! These are a great special treat, and we were needed a bit of sweet to break up the monotony of our past week's meals. Head on over to Fast Paleo and give these a try!


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