Big Soft Paleo Chocolate Chunk Cookies that are deliciously addicting but healthy, made with coconut flour and nut or seed butter of your choice. Sunflower butter can be used for a nut free option, or experiment with different nut butters to find your favorite batch! Dairy free, grain free, gluten free.
Hello Friday! And not just any Friday – it’s the Friday before the beginning of winter break – which for me means life is going to get busy before it calms down. Kids’ holiday parties, grocery shopping and cooking to do for the weekend, and trying to plan a couple of activities to get us out of the house.
This year, partially because I was sick from Thanksgiving through the first week in December, we wound up sort of postponing our holiday-celebrating. Yes, technically we were supposed to celebrate Hanukkah last week, or even the week before that, but because of the kids’ schedules plus not having shopped for gifts, we’re having our “official” family celebration tomorrow, complete with latkes, my butternut stuffing, gooey brownie pie, and almond butter sandwich cookies.
Personally, I prefer when we can celebrate Hanukkah and Christmas almost at the same time, at least overlapping, because it’s less confusing and I find that dragging out the holidays too long just leads to sensory overload for me and the kids! We are Jewish but not religious, AKA Santa visits and stuffs stockings but we don’t have a tree, he’s greeted with our electric menorah instead. And, this year, a big batch of these soft paleo chocolate chunk cookies, with some almond milk for dunking. Wouldn’t want him to be caught with a lactose-induced stomachache in anyone’s chimney, right?
I’m pretty sure he’ll be happy with these – even though I don’t think he’s normally a paleo eater or even gluten free. I’ve now made 3 separate batches (or 4? I lost count) of these cookies, each with a different type of nut or seed butter, and every time everyone in my family loved them! Maybe it’s the chocolate chunks, those chunks are seriously hard to resist!
The Enjoy Life Semi Sweet Chocolate Mega Chunks inspired the entire recipe for these big soft paleo chocolate chunk cookies, actually.
I was doing my regular grocery haul at the local Stop and Shop, when I spied any healthy food blogger’s fantasy in the baking aisle. Brace yourself kids, this was intense for me.
Right in the baking aisle of my boring Stop and Shop, which normally doesn’t even carry Enjoy Life brand anything at all, was a huge display of THREE TYPES of Enjoy Life baking chocolate: the mini chips, dark chocolate morsels, AND semi sweet chocolate mega chunks! The best part (YES!) is that they were all on sale for $3.99. I’ve yet to find any of their chocolate chips cheaper than that, although please guide me in the right direction if any of you have!
Anyway, since these are made with coconut flour and either nut or seed butter, you can easily make them nut free by using sunflower butter! All the pictures are from the first batch I made, which used sunflower butter, and that batch actually might have been my personal favorite.
One caveat for baking with sunflower butter though, is that if they’re left out several hours after baking, a chemical reaction between the sunflower butter and baking soda will turn the inside of the cookies green! I believe it has to do with the chlorophyll in the sunflower seeds reacting with the baking soda. A dash of lemon juice in the batter and slight reduction in the baking soda can minimize this (entertaining and harmless) phenomenon. Just wanted to give you a heads up that the nut free version of these cookies might wind up a bit colorful 🙂
Big Soft Paleo Chocolate Chunk Cookies {Nut Free Option}
Big Soft Paleo Chocolate Chunk Cookies {Nut Free Option}
Ingredients
- 2 eggs
- 1/4 cup organic coconut sugar
- 1/4 cup raw honey
- 1/2 cup sunflower butter* almond butter, or your favorite smooth nut butter
- 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
- 2/3 cup organic coconut flour
- 3/4 tsp baking soda
- dash fine grain sea salt
- 3/4 cup Enjoy Life Semi Sweet Chocolate Baking Chunks
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and line a large cookie sheet with parchment paper
- In a large bowl, whisk the eggs. Add the coconut sugar, honey, nut or seed butter, and vanilla and mix well until fully combined and smooth.
- In a smaller bowl, combine the coconut flour, baking soda and salt. Add the dry mixture to the wet until a sticky dough forms, then stir in the chocolate baking chunks.
- Chill the dough for about 5 minutes in the freezer**
- After the dough has firmed up a bit, form 12 balls and place on the parchment lined cookie sheet. Using another piece of parchment paper, press the cookie dough balls down so they are about 1/2 inch thick.
- Bake in the preheated oven for 10-12 minutes, until the tops of the cookies crack and the sides begin to brown. Dont overbake - they will still feel soft!
- Let them cool on the cookie sheet for 5-10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
- Serve with your favorite dairy free milk and enjoy!
Recipe Notes
*If using sunflower seed butter, you can add a dash of lemon juice to the batter and reduce the baking soda to 1/2 tsp to avoid the inside turning green. However, this is optional and if your cookies turn green, it is perfectly fine and they will still be delicious!
**Chilling the dough for 5 minutes will firm it up and make it easier to roll into balls. The coconut flour will also expand without chilling and the dough will firm up after a few minutes anyway.
Do you leave cookies out for Santa?
Any Jewish people who also celebrate Christmas (even just a little bit?)
Is your shopping done? Have you wrapped presents?
I have made a cookie like this (using semi sweet chocolate chips) so good! I never added the honey though, I have to try it! I like when target has the variety of the enjoy life chips but it’s not often! I like when Hanukah overlaps with Christmas, it makes the holiday season so much better. We don’t celebrate christmas at all but I do like going to look at lights!Have a happy Hanukah this weekend, I think it’s almost better that you had to wait, makes it more fun right now, don’t you think? It was over so fast and early
I know, now I sort of created my own holiday that’s in the middle of hanukkah and christmas! The actual hanukkah was a blur since I was still feeling under the weather.
Too funny about the cookies turning green! I bet that would be good for St Patricks day:) I love all your cookie recipes so Im sure this one is just as good!
I thought about that! I’ll have to use the green factor for that somehow 🙂
I’m so excited to see gluten free! I just told my daughter last night we were going to do one more round of holiday baking this weekend. Adding this to the list! Yum.
I can’t get enough holiday cookies!
Good thing you gave the green caution because I was just thinking about making this! Sunflower butter here I come! PS enjoy life is all I use and that is a killer price!!!
Lol, I think if you reduce baking soda to 1/2 tsp they won’t turn green – unless you like puffier cookies and don’t mind 🙂 Flavor of the sunflower butter was my favorite!
Well, you will be ready for St. Patricks day, huh?
I’ll have to use it somehow 😉
I am loving their dark chocolate morsels right now and plan to make these with peanut butter! That is a great way to celebrate the holidays. I finally got my parents to cave in to a Hanukkah bush in high school but we never did any of the rest of it.
Ooh these will be awesome with peanut butter!
I forgot you were Jewish 😛
So we actually never left Santa cookies. We would leave him leftovers from Christmas Eve dinner at my grandparents which we had our huge Italian feast plus my uncle would make homemade pizza. The pizza is what we left santa…and it was always gone when we woke-up 😉
(We also left reindeer sparkles and oats outside!)
I sometimes forget too 😉 I think leftovers of an Italian feast are even better than cookies!
these look so scrumptious! i love soft cookies, it’s certainly been a while but the do sound good.
i thought i was doing well on my hubby shopping, but then i found out that yes, there is indeed a reason why he told me his neck size is 17… and not 16. i didn’t think there was a difference so now i have to return and exchange the shirts i bought. oops! #wifefail
Lol, I actually gave up long ago buying Adam clothes – he’s pickier than my kids 🙂
As usual these cookies look amazing! I haven’t had sunflower butter since I was in high school but I bet it is amazing in these cookies! We used to leave out cookies and milk for Santa also, and when my sister was still young enough to believe in Santa but I didn’t (we’re nearly 7 years apart) I loved when my mom would let me help put presents under the tree and eat the cookies! I hope you and your family have a happy Hanukkah!
Thanks Laura! I’m sort of wondering how much longer the older girls are going to believe in Santa!
ugh, this holiday has been so off schedule. I agree! but better late than never right? big chunk ENJOY LIFE for the win!
Totally better late than never! It’s all blending together, but somehow I also feel like the holidays will be gone in a flash.
I didn’t know the lemon juice and baking soda trick! I’ve had sunflower muffins go green on me before, and while I have no problem with it, it’s a little harder to convince other people that they’re still perfectly fine to eat 😆 These look fab. I know Santa would love them 😉
I think if you can get away with half the baking soda it eliminates it, that said I’d prefer green and fluffy for muffins 😉
These look yummy. Funny about the green colour, I’ve never seen that happen before but will have to remember it for St Patrick’s day 🙂
Fun and healthy baking I guess!
Yum! Who doesn’t like a chocolate chip cookie? No one! Thanks for sharing!
Of course! Hope you try them 🙂
I love the Enjoy Life Brand too. They had them on sale at Nature’s Bin for $3.99 last weekend and I bought like four bags. Hey, you gotta take advantage of the deals when you see ’em. 🙂
It’s not like they won’t get used – can you imagine chocolate chips going to waste?
Oh my goodness, these look amazing! Chocolate chunk cookies are my weakness.
Anything chocolate is my weakness lately and the chunkier the better 🙂
These turned out really good! More like a real soft cookie than some of the other paleo cookie recipes, which are either too crispy or too gooey because of the “butter” used. Kept their shape well, too! I bet you could make several variations using this basic recipe – snickerdoodle, peanut butter, chocolate chocolate chunk – yum!
So glad you liked them! I have to revisit this recipe and play around with some variations!
Do you have the nutritional value menu per cookie? These are delicious but I’m curious to know what the nutritional value is.
I made these and they are terrific right out of the oven. I put them in a freezer bag in the freezer and had one today, they are pretty dry. Not sure if I did something wrong