I have thought about trying to make a GAPS chocolate chip since the very early days, but since chocolate wasn't strictly legal back then, and since I hate to waste a lot of food on experimenting, I never did get around to it. Thankfully, the folks over at Our Nourishing Roots did the job instead. I tried their recipe (linked below), but I used unsweetened chocolate in lieu of the cocoa butter/cocoa mixture. I'm not sure if that is why my chocolate came out sort of chewy, like a stiff caramel, or whether it's because I kept adding honey until the chocolate tasted bittersweet to me. Either way, it turned into a delicious and functional chocolaty substance. I left it to cool overnight at (Pacific Northwest, winter, unheated) room temperature. The next day, I cut it into strips and kept it refrigerated. I really needed to work quickly with this stuff to prevent its melting, but it held together beautifully in the cookies.Do try the coriander. It is a secret little trick that I used to use with my old white flour recipe.
Did I mention they're delicious? They are only very lightly sweet, but my recently off-the-wagon kids gobbled them up as happily as they had done with premium conventional ice cream merely days before.
Ingredients
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1/4 cup honey
1 large egg
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/4 tsp. salt
3 cups almond flour
1 tsp. ground coriander (optional)
1/4 tsp. baking soda (optional)
2/3 cup GAPS chocolate chunks, cut into small pieces
Method
Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees F. Cut up butter and place it in an oven-proof bowl, and melt butter in oven while it heats. When butter is melted, remove bowl and add honey. Carefully mix in honey. At this point your bowl will probably be cool enough to touch. Blend in egg and vanilla. Add in salt and mix. Add in almond flour and optional coriander and baking soda. Stir well. Dough will be slightly stiff. Add in chocolate chunks and stir through. Place heaping tablespoons of batter onto a cookie sheet and press to flatten* (and round if necessary). Bake for about 10-15 minutes until lightly browned. Remove from oven and allow to cool for about 5 minutes on the baking sheet. Using a very thin offset spatula, carefully transfer cookies to a cooling rack. Once they are cool enough to touch, eat them and enjoy. They hold up well, at this point. When they are thoroughly cooled, I recommend storing, tightly wrapped, in the refrigerator.
*This dough does not spread, so you can place them close together, but you need to make each round as flat as you want the finished cookies to be, keeping in mind that if they're too thick, they won't cook through. I go for about 1/2 an inch high.
