Choc Chip Cookies Made With Coconut Flour

I had a serious urge for some hearty wholegrain cookies the other day, and came up with these babies.

They were completely experimental but turned out alright!

Given my love for all things coconut, I decided it was high time I started playing with coconut flour.  According to one of my favourite health gurus, Dr Mercola, it's a great alternative to the standard wheat variety of flour, and comes with loads of health benefits, consisting of 14% coconut oil, and 58% dietary fiber (wheat bran has only 27%).  The remaining 28% consists of water, protein and carbs.

Coconut flour is also 100% gluten free, which is great news for those intolerant to gluten, however, because it doesn't contain any gluten, this also means that you can end up with a somewhat crumbly cookie (gluten = glue, which binds).  You could add an egg to bind the dough together, however I found that the date syrup I made did a fairly reasonable job.

Speaking of all things coconut, I also sweetened the cookies with coconut sugar. According to Natural News,  coconut sugar is low glycemic, and has many other nutritional qualities; it's high in potassium, magnesium, iron, boron, zinc and copper.

The cookies themselves turned out pretty dense, due to the coconut flour and the almond meal, and soft and cake-ish... but they're really tasty!

I used cacao nibs which didn't really melt very well, but I think they'd be amazing with dark or milk chocolate drops, or even a mashed banana or two!

Yum!

Ingredients

1 cup coconut flour

½ cup almond meal

1 cup oatmeal

1 cup coconut milk (or any milk of your choice)

3 tbs coconut sugar (or any unrefined sugar)

½ cup date syrup* (or honey)

½ cup cacao nibs

1 tsp baking powder

*Soak 12-15 dates in warm water and blend to form a thick syrup

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven at 180C

2. Combine all ingredients

3. Form into small cookie size balls and flatten

4. Bake for approximately 40 mins or until brown

As the day commenced in the morning at the local farmer's market, I thought I'd keep with the bluegrass, country theme, and baked these babies whilst rocking out to Old Crow Medicine Show's 2004 album - O.C.M.S.

(This was also shared on Monday Mania, Traditional Tuesdays, Healthy2day Wednesday, Real Food Wednesday Homemaking Link-Up, Full Plate Thursday and Simple Lives Thursday)