Last Wednesday I posted a recipe for “Almond Joy” gluten-free/low sugar cookies.  Upon tasting them, I was instantly sold on the nutty, cinnamon-y, chocolate-y taste of these cookies, but less so of the texture which ended up being rather spongy and cake-like.  In my online search this week for a crisper cookie, I came across Elana’s Pantry, a website dedicated to healthy, gluten-free, paleo recipes.  To be clear, I have no food issues and eat pretty much everything.  However, as I’ve grown older, I have noticed that I feel better if the bulk of my calories comes from fresh produce, lean meats, fish, and good quality dairy products.  Snacks are usually olives, pickles, nuts, nut butters and whole grain crackers.  My go-to dessert is fruit and a few squares of 72% or higher dark chocolate.

Every once in a while though I get a craving for a really GOOD cookie.

So when I read through the ingredients in Elana’s Vegan Peanut Butter Cookie recipe and saw that the list bore a lot of similarities to the Almond Joy cookies I made last week (hello healthy!) I figured I was headed in the right direction.   The most noticeable difference between the two recipes – beyond, of course, the addition of peanut butter –  is the lack of eggs in Elana’s recipe.  It made sense to me that an egg-less cookie would certainly make for a crisper cookie.   I followed Elana’s recipe substituting 2 tablespoons of unsalted butter since I didn’t have palm shortening and making the addition of (drumroll)…a bar of 72%  dark chocolate with almonds which I chopped.

If you’re too lazy to cook, you can feast vicariously through these step-by-step photos.

  1. The dry ingredients are mixed together, wet ingredients assembled and dark chocolate is chopped (and sampled for “quality control” purposes, of course!)

Ingredients for Vegan Peanut Butter Cookies

2. The cookies are plopped on a parchment-lined cookie sheet, flattened with a fork and are ready to go into the oven. (Since it was hot again in our apartment, I actually popped the unbaked sheet of cookies into the freezer for a few minutes while I did the washing up.)

cookies dough on a cookie sheet ready to be baked

3. Fresh out of the oven and cooling…

Photo of cookies fresh out of the oven

4. Ready to sample…

photo of peanut butter chocolate cookies on a plate

(The verdict?  Sweet, salty, rich, crumbly and oh-so-good!)

D’ya wanna bite?

a bite of a peanut butter chocolate cookie

Vegan Peanut Butter Cookies

Recipe By Elana Amsterdam 

Vegan Peanut Butter Cookies
 Serves: 12 cookies
Ingredients
  • 1 cup blanched almond flour
  • ½ teaspoon celtic sea salt
  • ¼ teaspoon baking soda
  • ½ cup creamy peanut butter or sunbutter
  • ¼ cup agave nectar or honey
  • 2 tablespoons palm shortening
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Instructions
  1. In a small bowl combine almond flour, salt and baking soda
  2. In a medium bowl mix together peanut butter, agave, shortening and vanilla with a hand blender
  3. Blend dry ingredients into wet with hand blender until well combined
  4. Scoop dough 1 tablespoon at a time onto a parchment paper lined baking sheet
  5. Use a fork to flatten in a criss-cross pattern
  6. Bake at 350° for 6-12 minutes until golden around the edges
  7. Serve

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