I’ve been craving chocolate every day of last week. I was eating the chips out of the bag on Monday, and my friends were cracking up, because it’s very uncharacteristic of me. I don’t love sweets, so… Then it turned into a Tollhouse cookie craving. That’s bad for me, because I can’t eat Tollhouse cookies. If I even eat one, I get a very bad tummy ache. I think it’s all the butter. I’m not lactose-intolerant, but I just have a hard time with butter.
I’d been toying with the idea of subbing coconut oil for the butter, so I decided to try baking. Now, I’m sure someone’s already done this. But it would be way more boring to just follow someone else’s recipe. So, I did a “recipe remake” following the instructions on the bag of chips. It took me three tries. As it turns out, coconut oil isn’t exactly like butter in terms of how it bakes up. This is my trouble with baking – it’s so very scientific. You can be more free-spirited just cooking. But, at least every batch was deliciously edible, if not entirely cookie-like.
Using a mini muffin tin gives you great "cookie bites" and deals with the flattened cookie problem!
I settled on doing them bite-size in a mini muffin tin. The cookies were flattening out too much without it. I also had a bit of a salty craving. Avalon Bakery makes these amazing chocolate chip sea salt cookies, but I didn’t want to just go straight to salt chucks, so I settled on salted sunflower seeds. Yum! Hope you enjoy them.
3 1/3 cup organic whole wheat pastry flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup organic coconut oil, still solid (not melted)
3/4 cup organic cane sugar
3/4 cup packed organic brown sugar
2 tsp vanilla (homemade vanilla recipe here)
2 tbsp milled flaxseed plus 6 tbsp water (this substitutes for two eggs)
2 cups chocolate chips (I don’t think Tollhouse brand are technically vegan, but vegan ones can be purchased at Whole Foods)
1/2 cup roasted salted sunflower seeds
Combine the cane sugar, brown sugar, flaxseed and water, salt, soda, and vanilla in a large bowl. Mix together so that all ingredients are distributed.
Get ready to combine your sugar mixture with the coconut oil. Your coconut oil should be solid; I kind of scraped mine out of the container and then packed it loosely until I had one cup full. Using a pastry blender or a large fork, begin blending the sugar mixture into the coconut oil until you have a soft sugary paste. If working the oil causes it to melt, no fear – you can pop the dough into the fridge for a few minutes before you bake it.
Using your mixer (or your amazing arm muscles), slowly begin mixing in the flour a little at a time, until all the flour is incorporated into the dough.
Add in the chocolate chips and sunflower seeds. Knead the dough with your hands if necessary to distribute them through the dough. Since this cookie dough is vegan and there’s no eggs involved, feel free to eat as much dough as you need to. This is a safe space, and we don’t judge here. I ate about five cookies of dough lol!
If you need to chill the dough a little at this point, if the coconut oil made it too soft, feel free to do so. It should only need about five minutes in the freezer.
Break off chucks of dough and press them down loosely into your mini muffin tin, right to the top of the muffin cup top, since the dough will only rise a little bit, not like an actual muffin.
Bake your cookie bites at 350 degrees for about 15-18 minutes, or until golden brown on the tops. Use your judgement about how gooey you’d like them in the centers, and let them bake a few minutes more or less, depending on your preference. Let your cookie bites cool in the tray for 20 minutes. Remember, they may cook a little more in the cookie tin.
You should get about 48 cookie bites. The dough will keep in the fridge for several days, so feel free to save some for baking, or eating raw, later. :-)
Enjoy!
