Today is the big reveal day for the August posts for the Secret Recipe Club
And these fugdy, chewy, very chocolatey chocolate cookies
with hints of peanut butter undertones
are what I am really excited to reveal!
Last month, I made Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies
Many of you have written to me to tell me that you’ve made these and you love the simplicity of the recipe and that the full-bodied peanut butter flavor has you hooked and you’re never going back to traditional PB cookies. Me either!
But I think you’ll be very happy with my enhanced version, i.e. chocolate is added in two forms
Because isn’t everything better with a little enhancing?
I think so.
This month, I was assigned the blog Not Rachel Ray and when I saw she had made Flourless Chocolate Cookies using Lori the Recipe Girl’s recipe (as an aside Lori is a fellow San Diego area blogger and she hosted an awesome party I attended a few weeks ago)
I knew I wanted to take a stab at Flourless Chocolate Cookies.
I adapted my own Flourless Peanut Butter Cookie recipe and this is what I came up with.
I’m pretty sure you won’t have problems with leftovers on your hands.
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Flourless Chocolate Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies (Naturally Gluten Free, with Vegan Option. Adapted from my own Flourless Peanut Butter Cookie Recipe)
3/4 c white sugar
1/4 c brown sugar, packed
1/2 c cocoa powder, unsweetened
1 c peanut butter
1 egg (replace real egg by combining 1 tbsp ground flax seeds + 3 tbsp warm water in a small bowl and stirring. Allow a “jelly” to form after a few minutes and use this as your “egg”)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 c to 3/4 chocolate chips (or peanut butter chips, white chocolate chips, butterscotch chips) & stir to combine
Directions:
Combine all ingredients except the chocolate chips in one bowl and stir by hand with a spoon.
After all ingredients are incorporated stir in the chocolate chips
At this point you have the option to place the dough in the freezer for 10-15 minutes. Cold dough will create puffier/thicker cookies vs. thinner/flatter cookies during the baking process. It will also help with the rolling out/ball-forming process but it’s optional if you’re in a hurry.
Form into 1 inch balls (I rolled mine with my hands but you could just drop them on a cookie sheet with a spoon) and place on cookie sheet (I used parchment-lined + lightly sprayed with cooking spray for easy cleanup).
Bake at 350F for 10 to 12 minutes or until they barely look done. They can go from raw to burned in about 90 seconds so watch them but know that because they are dark cookies, visuals may be tricky.
They may not look done after 10-12 minutes, but that’s ok. Take them out of the oven anyway and allow them to cool.
Yields 24 cookies (Mine were fairly small. Reducing to 12-18 bigger cookies is an option and adjust baking time accordingly)
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A Visual Guide:
Gather your ingredients
Add everything into one bowl except the chocolate chips.
I kept the dry ingredients at the bottom and then put the wet ingredients on top because I wanted a dry ingredients “bed” for the PB but I’m sure it doesn’t matter. I wouldn’t want to waste a drop of PB by having it get stuck to bottom the bowl.
Stir to combine all the ingredients, then add the chocolate chips, and stir those in.
Dough will be very thick and it looks sticky and quite un-workable, but the fat in the peanut butter keeps the dough together and less sticky than you’d imagine.
Freeze your mixing bowl with the dough in it for 10-15 minutes before rolling out the balls.
Or, simply roll immediately if you’re impatient and don’t want to chill the dough.
Note: warmer dough will produce flatter and crisper cookies; colder dough will produce puffier and chewier cookies
Bake for 10-12 minutes or until they are barely done looking.
I like chewy, gooey, half-baked cookies so I was a 10 minute girl
Allow them to cool for as long as you can stand it
Devour
The beauty of these cookies are that:
they only take 2 minutes to mix up the dough
no electric mixer required & you can do it all by hand
minimal cleanup/dishes (I hate baking projects where you dirty every dish in your kitchen!)
naturally GF and very easily adapted to be vegan
and they will make all chocaholics very happy.
The cold dough really dis make a difference in the finished product.
The flourless chococlate cookies are really puffy compared to my previous flourless peanut butter cookies which I baked with warm dough on a warm day.
These cookies are perfectly chewy
And not dry. <– Dry baked goods are not worth my chew!
In terms of flavor, these are definitely chocolate cookies that have been enhanced with peanut butter
If you want more of a peanut buttery flavor, scale back the cocoa powder
Or just make these and add chocolate chips
But if you want to get your chocolate on, today’s cookies are for you.
And they’re small. So grab a few.
And if for some reason you want to stuff candy bars in your cookies, try Snickers Bar Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies
Feel free to stuff just about any kind of candy bar in these, too
Want to see what other people in the Secret Recipe Club made this month?
Questions:
1. What’s your favorite cookie?
My favorite cookies are half-baked, ooey-gooey, not dry. And if a cookie is properly baked and the flavors are balanced, I can appreciate just about any kind of cookie from chocolate chip to peanut butter cookies to snickerdoodle to molasses.
Ironically one cookie that tends to bore me are sugar cookies. And I love sugar! But they are usually too overbaked, too crispy, too dry, and the monotone flavor is boring for me. I created raw vegan sugar cookie dough bites though, and they’re not dry or boring. Promise.
I also really like texture which is why oatmeal raisin cookie with their chunky oats, raisins, and brown sugar are always a hit with me. The raw vegan oatmeal raisin cookies here are so easy, too. No oven required.
2. Can anything ever be too chocolatey? Too dark or intense?
I think not!
Just like I said nothing can ever be too rich or too sweet when I was talking about these
White Chocolate Vanilla Marshmallow Cake Bars – 4 Layers
Nothing can ever be too chocolatey or too dark.
I’d rather skip “milk” chocolate and either do white or dark chocolate, actually.
These cookies are more of dark chocolate meets hint of peanut butter.
I love sweet, white chocolate but I also love rich, full-bodied dark chocolate, too.
P.S. If you’re just catching up on posts from the weekend, here are mine since Friday:
- L is For
- Funky Town
- Happily Sitting It Out
- Meetup to Start the Weekend
- Quotes
- Sugar & Featured
- Beauty Then & Now
Have a great week!
Like Jackie, my dough was quit crumbly and dry. I added a bit more peanut butter just to get it to stick but that didn’t really work. I think it would have come together if I had used my kitchen aid. The finished result was also like Jsckie’s cookie. It remained in a ball. They were not fudge or gooey but they are still delicious. I followed your recipe exactly, using one real egg as well. I saw in your comments that we shouldn’t use natural peanut butter. But that’s all I had. I’m guessing that’s the difference. I specifically buy it because its ‘natural’ and without all the fillers. But I think you need the fillers in this or add a little coconut oil or butter to help it. ??? These were still very good. My daughter absolutely loves them. I just wanted them to look more like yours. They’re perfect.
Whenever people write to say they didn’t get the results I got, but didn’t use the products I suggested, that’s 99% of the time why. And in this case, it’s the natural PB.
Sometimes people have luck with it, but other times, not so much. In a recipe like this where there are so few ingredients, each and every ingredient does matter and I’m sure conventional PB will do the trick for you! And if you think using your stand mixer will help, do that! Do whatever you think will help :)
Sounds like you’re awfully close and loved the flavor…and your daughter loves them…so that’s all that matters as a mom, right! Just use Jif, Skippy, etc next time and you’ll be all set!
These are my absolute favourite cookies ever!!! They are chocolatey, peanutty, fudgey perfection! I’ve made them with both almond butter and peanut butter and can’t decide which I prefer. I’ve also substituted Splenda for sugar, but I recommend reducing it to 1/2 cup Splenda if anyone wants to try that. Oh, and I like to sprinkle some fleur de sel on top of them… yum! I am so thankful that you posted this recipe and I stumbled upon it!
I am so glad that you love them! Thanks for coming back to LMK you’re a huge fan. I made a new version – using all brown sugar and choc chunks in case you’re interested. If you end up trying them, please LMK!
https://www.loveveggiesandyoga.com/2013/01/peanut-butter-chocolate-chunk-cookies.html
I made these to take to my family’s Christmas Day brunch tomorrow, and honestly hope I can stay out of them until then. They are so good – gooey and decadent! I’ve pretty much given up cookies since turning to a vegan lifestyle, since most traditional recipes call for butter and margarine, no matter what kind, just does not give the same result. Not so with these cookies – they are so moist and rich, you don’t notice the lack of butter and certainly don’t miss it.
The only thing I changed with the recipe is that I added about 1/8 tsp. of salt – the tiniest bit to enhance the chocolate flavor. I’ve found that this makes a significant in any chocolate recipe.
Thanks for this recipe, and happy holidays!
This recipe is an oldie but a goodie – and glad you’re so happy with them! You’re right that it can be very challenging to get the same results with vegan baking as with traditional (something about butter and eggs – can be hard to recreate) but glad that these have been a keeper for you and you’re so pleased! Thanks for the report back!
So I made these the other night. I can’t eat eggs so I used the flax seed substitute. The dough was very dry and crumbly. I put it in the freezer for 10min and then proceeded to ‘roll’ the cookies. Again, the dough was very crumbly, almost like sand. I got all the cookies rolled, and baked for 11min. They remained in the shape of a ball and didn’t look like cookies at all. However, they tasted really good! And are VERY rich and sweet. I just wonder if it’s the lack of egg that really makes a difference for these? Just wanted to share my experience with them. I’ll make them again for sure since they really do satisfy that chocolate craving!
I would say that if you would have doubled the amount of flax egg you used, you would have been in better shape. Cocoa powder, in general, and all that PB, is going to be very thick so you need to maybe have added some more moisture. Everyone’s PB, cocoa, powder, how ‘large’ their flax egg is, is all going to vary. I say double the egg/water volume, or play around with it a bit so the dough isn’t so dry, and you’d be in better shape. A real egg in this recipe is magical. As you know it ‘can’ be done vegan as you did, but just may require a few batches and testing to get that perfect consistency. LMK if you try again!
My mom has started a gluten free way of eating and today is her birthday. I just made these for her (rather than cake) after coming across the recipe on Pinterest. O….. M……. G…… they are so good! Thank you so much!
glad to hear they’re a hit! and happy bday to your mom! thanks for finding me, making these, and for the field report back!
hey what can I substitute for peanut butter. I want to make these but dont like peanut butter in my cookies
You could use sunflower seed butter or perhaps almond butter but these are a very short ingredient list-cookie. And a key ingredient is…PB!
So check under cookies, here, for something that may be more suited to your liking
https://www.loveveggiesandyoga.com/recipes/desserts