Simple Gluten-Free Cocoa Cookies

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I am all about simple recipes that only have a few ingredients. It balances out the multi-ingredient smoothies I make each day.

I made these cookies today and they were awesome. With wanting chocolate and there being a shortage in the house due to going through Whole30 twice now, it was a bit of a challenge. I managed to find a recipe that worked after some modification, but that’s not new for me.

I found the original recipe for these cookies looking for a quick Whole30, Paleo, and/or grain-free cookie. The original recipe included palm shortening, chocolate chips, along with a few more things I either didn’t have/wasn’t going to use. That left me with 3 ingredients and then I added in organic cane sugar since I couldn’t make it without it. I tried the recipe with no sugar, but it wouldn’t stay together, so I cut the amount of sugar in half and it worked great. We had finished our 30 Day Whole30 program, so sugar was allowed but I was keeping it to a minimum. I don’t do well with coconut (so unfortunate), so coconut derivatives were out.

With the creation of a cookie with 4 ingredients, I made due with what I had in the fridge and pantry while staying as close to my eating rules as possible. This is the result.

Simple Gluten-Free Cocoa Cookies

I gathered my ingredients:

  • 1 cup Almond Butter (crunchy, unsweetened and salt-free)
  • 1 egg (organic)
  • 1/4 cup cacao powder (unsweetened, organic)(cocoa substitute)
  • 1/4 cup brown sugar (cane, organic)

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Put all ingredients into a large glass mixing bowl and mixed well until it closely resembled dense cookie dough.

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Used a 1 Tbsp scoop and separated the “dough” into piles.

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Since these are nut butter cookies, they made me think of the peanut butter cookies my aunt used to make. I decided to use a fork to smash them down but only in one direction. They were baked for about 12 minutes at 350°F, promptly removed from the oven, and the parchment was slid off the tray and onto the oven surface where they cooled. The more they cool the crunchier they get – or at least that was my experience. Awesome, little, simple cookie.

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