chunky peanut butter chocolate chip sandies

Nobody likes a healthy cookie. They're too—healthy. They lack the perfect texture—regardless of whether the cookie is meant to be crisp or soft and chewy—and usually there's a funny aftertaste of whole grains. There's never enough chocolate, and if there is, it's never sweet enough. And what's with all these dried gogi berries and weird coconut shavings? Hey, does this have coconut flour in it??

Sorry. I don't like “healthy” cookies either.

Except, when they don't taste healthy. (Sounds terrible, but it's true.) You just can't beat a real chocolate chip cookie made with real sugar and white flour—a tender, buttery, slightly gooey cookie fresh from the oven with little pools of warm chocolate in it….

Sadly, you can't just replace white flour with spelt or coconut flour or almond flour and expect to get the same result. That's usually not how baking works. (Although in the recipe below, I was able to do just that! The peanut butter masks the taste of the spelt, I think.)

However: there are some delicious “healthy” cookies out there, believe it or not. With food-allergy awareness continually growing and more wholesome, natural foods coming back into vogue, health advocates and people on restricted diets have done a lot of research...and a lot of ACB (“alternative cookie baking”). ;) (Totally made that up, by the way.)

And thanks to Pinterest, anyone with an Internet connection can reap the rewards of their labor.

I think.

Hope?

There'd BETTER be some good healthy cookies out there!

OK, reality check. See, I haven't been able to find very many healthy cookies...I know for a fact that there are at least a few out there, and I have faith that there are more, but it does take some effort to find them. As we all know, there are a lot of rotten healthy cookie recipes floating around on the Internet/Pinterest, and the only way to sort the good cookie recipes from the bad recipes is to...make...them...all.

A little time-consuming, if you ask me.

Not a project you can whip up in a single day.

Over the course of a few months, however, I'm hoping to test enough recipes to come up with a list of super yummy, super healthy cookies you'd be excited to replace your old cookie recipes with. As I find them, I'll share them on the blog.

(I'm tempted to end with, “Make cookies great again!” But that reminds me of a certain somebody...and thinking about that certain somebody puts a damper on pretty much everything...so I'll refrain.)

And actually, if you like peanut butter, here's a recipe you could try today!

(A word of warning: if you don't like dry cookies, these aren't your best bet. Sandies are supposed to be dry, though; it's not the healthy ingredients “ruining” them! I've had these made with white flour and sugar, and the taste/texture is pretty much identical to the healthy version below. If you haven't had sandies before, give 'em a try. We love these.)

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Chunky Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Sandies

[Taken from Lauren Groveman's Kitchen by—you guessed it—Lauren Groveman. Original recipe is on page 487. The “tweaked” recipe is below, in my own words.]

Ingredients

4 cups ground spelt

1 ½ teaspoon baking powder

2 sticks unsalted butter at room temp

½ cup + 1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon GentleSweet (the same as 1 ½ cups sugar; use only 3 cups spelt if you use sugar instead of GS)

1 large egg

1 cup peanut butter

1 cup chopped peanuts

1 cup chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 375 F and butter the cookie sheets.

Whisk the dry ingredients in one bowl.

In another bowl, cream the butter with the Gentle Sweet. Add the egg, mix well, then stir in the peanut butter. Nuts and chocolate chips come next. Add the flour mixture and stir until the batter is smooth and well-mixed. (This is a stiff dough, so use your muscles!)

Use a tablespoon to scoop out the dough onto the cookie sheets. You can make a crosshatch pattern on each cookie using a fork. Bake 10 minutes, switching the cookie sheets about halfway through.

That's it. :)

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So, out of curiosity, what's your favorite type of cookie? Any favorite recipes to share? :)

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