I want to tell you about my Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe that took me a couple weeks and multiple batches trying to get the recipe just right.  I am really enjoying the recipe that yielded my most current batch of about 30 cookies. They happen to be gluten free, “paleo”, and just may help you burn a little bodyfat. Those are just added bonuses. My primary concern was using a recipe that is centered around good, wholesome food choices.

Here is a little background about this project.  First of all, when it comes to food, I come from a bodybuilding point of view. And, although currently bodybuilding may not be the coolest new thing, one thing that bodybuilders understand very well is how EVERY food you choose to eat has a direct impact on how you look, feel, and perform.  In short, good bodybuilders are masters of what I call goal oriented dieting.  A mastery of the art of eating is essential to the bodybuilding craft.  So, I may look at food a bit differently than you do.

I DO NOT count (or worry about) calories.  EVER.

To me, counting calories is for amateurs.  If it works for you, GREAT!  But, I’m just saying, there is a less painful way.  To me, counting calories is tedious and unnecessary.  Even if I am dieting down for a bodybuilding contest, I DO NOT count calories.  It’s just totally irrelevant to me.  What is critical to me is FOOD CHOICE, timing of meals, and the macronutrient (proteins, carbs, fats) profile.

I look at each and every food in terms of:

1. will this food help me?
2. will this food hurt me?
3. is this food basically neutral?

For example, eggs.  Eating at least one egg yolk per day, to me, is a necessity.  Not only is an egg yolk loaded with some advantageous items (such as arachidonic acid, biotin, and selenium) that are difficult to find in other foods, eating eggs has been shown time and time again to stabilize blood sugar levels.  And anybody that knows anything about dieting can tell you that, essentially, ALL DIETING is about the manipulation of insulin.  But, hold on – I am getting a little more complicated here than I need to, or want to.  We can talk advanced nutrition and diet theory theory some other time.

Let’s just finish with saying that eating 2000 calories per day from sugar is A WORLD APART from eating 2000 calories per day from chicken.

Anybody can see that, right?  That kind of blows calorie theory / energy metabolism and popular diet theory right out of the water, does it not?  So, in summary, food choice trumps calories every day of the week.

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Let’s get back to the cookies… damn it… I just LOVE cookies so much.  Anyway, before I shoot this recipe out there, I would also like to add that this recipe was inspired by similar Paleo Diet recipes.  Now, I am not sure that the hardcore Paleo Diet people out there would agree that all my ingredients are Paleo, but I am happy with my current formula.




Here’s the recipe:

Delicious, Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

• 3.25 cups of Blanched Almond Flour
• 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon of sea salt
• 1/2 teaspoon of Cinnamon
• 2 whole eggs
• 2 egg whites
• 4 tablespoons of Coconut Oil (Extra Virgin, Cold Pressed Unrefined)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup of pure maple syrup
• 1/2 cup Teddie Bear All Natural Peanut Butter Crunchy
• 1/2 cup coconut flakes
• 1/2 cup Dark Chocolate Chips (60% cacao)
• 1/2 cup Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips

What you should notice about my ingredients is they are BASIC, CLEAN foods.  Also, there is no wheat flour in these cookies, which is one of the most important points.  I have been a chronic avoider of wheat and wheat products for nearly a lifetime.  My weakness was always that I love baked goodies like cookies and brownies, but for the most part, I have avoided wheat and wheat products at every turn.  Why?  The short answer is wheat is a problem, especially if you are male- wheat is estrogenic.  And (wheat) flour, in general, is a problem for anyone sensitive to carbohydrates or gluten.

If you examine each one of these ingredients, almost all of them provide positive health benefits on their own.

Go ahead and Google the health benefits of vanilla, cinnamon, coconut oil, almonds (almond flour), natural peanut butter, eggs, and dark chocolate (cacao).  You will find that you finish with a pretty long list of health benefits.  Granted, this is a pretty simplified way of looking at health benefits of food and you do have to also consider how eating these foods together affects the benefits, but I am happy to experiment on myself by overeating these cookies.

Here’s the easy to follow directions.




DIRECTIONS

Hopefully, you have a KitchenAid Mixer AND a Ninja (blender).  If not you will have to do most of it by hand in a large mixing bowl.  But let’s assume you have the mixer and the blender and then you can do it the easy way or find another way.

In the Kitchen Aid Mixer, throw in the almond flour, baking soda, sea salt, and cinnamon.  Set the mixer on low for a couple minutes and get that stuff mixed up.

In the BLENDER, crack the 2 whole eggs and throw them in, add 2 more egg whites.  Then add 4 tablespoons of coconut oil.  Add the vanilla extract, 1 teaspoon.  Then add the 1/2 cup REAL maple syrup…

Okay, now blend up those “wet” ingredients.  Don’t turn it into a Frappe, just put the blend on medium blend or “stir” or whatever medium low is on your blender.  Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Restart the KitchenAid Mixer on low and add the blender contents to your “dry ingredients.  Use a rubber spatula to get all that good stuff out of the blender.

Let the mixer run for a few minutes while you clean up a little.

Stop the mixer.  Add the peanut butter and restart the mixer.  Mix for a couple minutes.  Stop the mixer and add the coconut flakes.  Restart the mixer and mix for a couple more minutes.  Let your cookie dough sit in the mixer for a few more minutes while you tidy up the kitchen a bit more.  Restart the mixer.  Mix for a couple more minutes.  Add in the CHOCOLATE CHIPS.   Mix a little longer.  Good.




Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.  Even though you don’t really need to, spray the parchment paper with a non-stick cooking spray.  Use a parfait spoon to dole out golf ball size scoops of cookie dough on your cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.  I can fit 16 chocolate chip golf balls per sheet.  BAKE at 350 degrees for 11 minutes.

This recipe makes about 30 cookies.

MACRO-NUTRIENT PROFILE: FATS, CARBOHYDRATES, PROTEINS

I entered this recipe into a diet app on my iPhone called Calorie Counter by Fat Secret, so I could find out how much protein, carbohydrate, and fat was in this recipe (download it for yourself by clicking below). Here are the results:

The full batch, entire batter, contains 326 grams of fat, 275 grams of carbohydrate, and 113 grams of protein, yielding a total of 4159 calories.

The entire batter makes about 30 cookies.  So divided out, each cookie contains roughly 11 grams of fat, 9 grams of carbohydrate, and 3.75 grams of protein.  It is also very important to notice that each cookie only contains 9 grams of carbs AND slightly more than 2.5 of those carbs/cookie are FIBER.  This means the “net” carbs/cookie is actually only slightly more than 6 grams.  It is also very important to take note of the fat sources and types of fats in these cookies.

Without getting overly complicated, I find it important to mention that the majority of the saturated fat in this recipe comes from the coconut oil and is in the form of MCTs (Medium Chain Triglycerides).  MCTs are another item, well known to bodybuilders, for their ability to provide energy AND help your body burn more fat. MCTs may help you lose weight because they are quickly burned and metabolized. MCTs get absorbed directly from the gut into the liver and do not get stored as fat but rather burned quickly and turned into energy.   Wow… those bodybuilders in the 80’s REALLY WERE ahead of the curve.

SUMMARY

So I have made great tasting chocolate chip cookies that include several powerfood items, are maybe Paleo, relatively low in carbs, contain no wheat or wheat products, and are gluten free.  Oh, and these cookies may help you lose bodyfat, most likely due to helping you avoid other cookies that contain less than ideal ingredients.  I call that a WIN.

Unless you eat 25 of them like I did yesterday…

Enjoy!

Thank you for reading.