Flourless Chocolate Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

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!