Who doesn't love a freshly baked chocolate chip cookie? There's just something about them, fresh out of the oven, that reminds me of my grandmas house and I just love it! My grandma used to be the queen of oatmeal chocolate chip cookies! You could almost always find some in her cookie jar every time you came by for a visit. I can still taste them now, a little dry, not enough chocolate chips, but an over abundance of love was her secret ingredient!
Today's recipe comes from an oatmeal chocolate chip recipe I re-created a few years back before I began eating as "strict" as I do. Looking back now, I realized that there's a lot of growth I have made over the years of teaching others how to live healthy and eat healthy. Growth in the fact that I now know more about ingredients and different factors that effect our overall health than just plain old calories. Do I wish sometimes that I didn't know as much as I do about food??? Maybe. Haha, but honestly, no, because now I get to help YOU feel better and learn how foods can either be healing or inflammatory to our bodies.
So let's get to it!
Back in 2018 my sister and I created the original "nutri.vation" account. Somewhere along the way I had another baby, and she moved on to grow another IG account, and we lost our login/password and still have no idea how to recover it. :) HELP!
That being said, this then led to me creating the NEW AND IMPROVED "nutri_vation" account. This Oatmeal Chocolate Chip recipe was a fan favorite over on that page, and it truly is delicious. I have now taken this recipe and tweaked it to be a little more gut friendly and, let's be honest, nutritious. I'll show you what I did and you can decide between the two, which one you'll try out!
Original Recipe
Nutritious Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
Makes 32 - 1" cookies
2 cups organic oat flour
1 cup organic old fashioned rolled oats
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup pure maple syrup
1/2 cup pumpkin puree
1/2 cup organic nut butter
1/4 cup grass fed butter, or extra virgin olive oil
1 large egg, room temperature
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup dark chocolate chips
Directions
Preheat your oven to 325 degrees. Line 2 baking dishes with parchment paper (non-bleached is best.)
In a large bowl combine all dry ingredients (aside from chocolate chips) and mix well.
Once mixed, add wet ingredients and stir until well combined (batter should be semi-sticky). Add your chocolate chip cookies and fold in to the batter until evenly dispersed.
Spoon out your cookies onto your baking dishes. I like to use a 1" scoop so my cookies are more of a snack size, perfect for adding to kid's lunches or a quick snack out the door. Smash down the tops of the cookies to flatten, as they won't naturally flatten due to the oats.
Bake in the oven for 12 minutes. Remove cookies from the pan and allow to cool for 5 minutes on cooling racks before eating!
*Optional swaps or add-ins:
If you don't have pumpkin puree on hand you can swap it out for apple sauce, plain whole fat Greek yogurt, or even mashed banana!
Don't have pure maple syrup? Use honey, molasses, or coconut sugar instead.
Instead of using butter or olive oil, you can also bake these cookies with coconut oil, giving it the perfect hint of coconut!
Try swapping in 2 Tbls of rolled oats for 2 Tbls of hemp hearts for more nutrients!
Raisins or craisins are always optional add-ins when it comes to cookies! Just make them your own!
Let's take a look at the ingredients above and learn about why I made some small swaps.
As time goes on, we are learning more and more about the relationship gluten has with our guts. It's quite harsh and not easily digested, which often leads to issues such as leaky gut, insulin resistance, inflammation, and even possibly Celiac's Disease. Food intolerances are common with this one, especially as many of us live with inflamed guts. Oats, DO NOT contain gluten! However, many are processed in factories along-side wheat, so if you do have intolerances to wheat than I suggest buying them with the label "gluten free". Otherwise, organic oats are what you want.
Why do I suggest buying organic oats? Well oats are heavily sprayed in glyphosate, which is the commonly used compound Round-Up. This pesticide kills all weeds and bugs on or around our crops. Well, guess what? If glyphosate is on our crops to help kill everything around/on it, what do you think happens when you ingest it? It will kill all the good and bad bacteria in our guts. If we kill the good bacteria (probiotics) in our guts then we can't properly digest our food, which in turn leads to leaky gut, insulin resistance, inflammation, and even possibly Celiac's Disease. (Ahh ha moment anyone?) This is why I recommend buying organic oats!
***You can learn all about this in my Intro to Learning Nutrition course here***
Next, instead of using brown sugar we just took it out all together and used only pure maple syrup. Is it still a sugar? Yes! Will it still raise your blood sugar levels? Yes! Is it more nutrient dense than brown sugar? ABSOLUTELY YES! Unlike sugar, maple syrup has high level of antioxidants, contains zinc and magnesium, is much easier to digest, doesn't give you as high of an insulin spike, and is antimicrobial (similar to that of honey). So if you're going to eat something sweet, you may as well make it nutrient dense as well right?!
In this recipe I swapped out yogurt for pumpkin. Pumpkin has high levels of Beta-carotene in it, which is great for our eyes, may help fight off some cancers, prevents macular degeneration, and boost neurological and heart health! Pumpkin also houses high levels of Vitamins C and E! Both help strengthen the immune system and our tissue health! Yogurt has great health benefits, but you need to make sure you're buying the right kind...this is a different topic for another day.
When choosing a chocolate to bake with, be sure to choose one that's contains good sugars. A lot of our chocolate can be found to have harsh ingredients such as high fructose corn syrup, sugar (most likely a gmo crop), dextrose, fructose, maltose, soy, and more. I really like the Enjoy Life chocolate chips because, one, they're dairy free for any of us who are trying to cut out dairy, and two, they use cane sugar, a non-gmo crop. Their ingredients are simple and clean! The way our food should be. Another brand I like is Bake Believe. I found this specific package at Costco. These chocolate chips are dark chocolate, dairy free, AND sugar free! Sweetened with stevia leaf! Stevia leaf does NOT have an effect on our blood sugar levels like other sweeteners. It's actually a great swap if you are dealing with insulin resistance or type 2 diabetes. We love them in our cookies!
A benefit to baking with dark chocolate is that it is an anti-oxidant! We all know we need more of this in our lives! As we consume inflammatory foods, live a stressful lifestyle, don't get enough rest, surround our bodies with toxins out of our control, these anti-oxidants come in and help rid our bodies of free radicals (essentially damaged molecules). Pretty cool huh?
Can you believe all of these foods in a simple oatmeal chocolate chip cookie can actually be so beneficial to our overall health? Digging a little deeper and understanding what our food actually does to our bodies makes a difference and I hope that you can learn that from here!
Now the question is...Which recipe are you going to bake?
Let me know which one you choose! I'd love to hear about your experience. And if you're social, don't forget to tag me on Instagram @nutri_vation so I can see all the fun recipes you're making along with me!
Happy baking!
Love,
Danielle
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