Dairy-free, wheat-free Chocolate Chip Cookies

These past few days I have just been craving chocolate chip cookies. It's been that kind of a week here in London.... when the weather turns from "spring is in the air!" to.... snow (in a place where it never snows!)... well, that kinda dulls the dance a bit for you. Hence, chocolate. chip. cookies! Soft, creamy butter whipped together with brown and white sugar, add eggs, flour, chocolate... Toll House perfection.

BUT. I have recently decided to eliminate dairy from my diet. (Originally for my skin, but since delving into Dr. Google some more, now I think I'm going to eliminate it for life. For an explanation, read this.) Hence my dilemma: strong need for chocolate chip cookies on one hand, shaky resolve to eliminate a beloved food group on the other.

Cue: delicious memory from high school of the vegan tahini chocolate chip cookies from an obscure oasis of a food market staffed by hippies off a mildly scary avenue in New Haven.

I had never tried to recreate those, but if ever there was a time it was this time. Some more use of my friend Google and I had a recipe cobbled together from a few sources. And oh. Oh. OH. Wow. Can I just say, I have really been missing these in my life. They are SO good.  I know I say that about a lot of things, but seriously folks, these are da bomb.

They are a dangerous thing to make. Because you will want to have, not one or two of them, but three, four, maybe even five. And they have no dairy, no wheat, and only natural sweeteners - so you will feel like it's okay with the world if you, er, maybe do have one last (fifth) one. Go ahead. Make them. I DARE you not to eat that fifth one.

The only problem is, they would go really well with a glass of milk.



 


Tahini Chocolate Chip Cookies
adapted from here and there

You can use a mix of any kind of natural nut butters that you have on hand. But do bear in mind that tahini has 5x more calcium than milk! Also, feel free to play around with the honey and agave - you can use only one or the other, but honey packs a much bigger sweet punch so your cookies will be a lot sweeter if you use all honey.

These can be vegan if you use 2 tablespoons ground chia mixed with a 1/3 cup water instead of the egg. You can also make these prettier by baking them in silicone muffin tins (bottom picture) instead of on a baking tray.

2/3 cup tahini
1/3 cup all natural, no salt peanut butter
1/4 cup agave
1/4 cup honey
1 egg, beaten
1 cup quick-cooking oats (porridge oats)
1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350 and lightly grease a cookie sheet.

Put the nut butters in a bowl, and mix until they are combined and very smooth. Add the agave and the honey and stir until well-combined. Add the egg and mix well. Stir in the oats and then the chocolate chips. If mixture is very runny, add a 1/4 cup more oats, or refrigerate for a half-hour.

Form the dough into golf ball size balls and place on cookie sheet. Bake for about 15 minutes.