Eat Plants, Feel Good: Super Vanilla Chocolate Chip Cookies

C is for Cookie, that's good enough for me! Who doesn't love chocolate chip cookies? I know that I sure do, and so do all of my faithful taste-testers who helped in the development of this recipe. I had to try THREE TIMES to get it just right. I wanted to create a chocolate chip cookie that would incorporate whole foods ingredients, at the same time providing a blast of delicious vanilla flavor in each bite. I hope you enjoy the end result. I know that I have a hard time resisting them!

SUPER VANILLA CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES

Ingredients:

3/4 cup agave nectar

3/4 cup sucanat*

1/2 cup coconut oil or butter**

2 1/2 tsp. natural Mexican vanilla (use only 1 tsp. if using regular vanilla extract)

1 large egg

1 1/4 cups graham flour (can sub whole wheat pastry flour)

1 cup ground rice flour

1 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. sea salt

2 cups dark chocolate chips***

*Learn more about sucanat here.
**Learn about coconut oil vs. butter here.
***Choose chocolate chips with as high a cocoa content as possible.

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

2. Beat agave, sucanat, egg, butter, and vanilla in a medium sized bowl.

3. Stir in flours, baking soda, and salt.. Stir in chocolate chips.

4. Scoop dough balls onto cookie sheets, placing 2 inches apart. I use a cookie scoop to ensure same-sized cookies.

5. Bake 8-10 minutes. Cool on rack. I found that these cookies had to cool for quite a while (30 min or so) before they solidified enough to pick up. After that, they were perfect!

YIELD: Just over 2 dozen cookies.