Almond Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

Today I decided to try a new recipe I found on Sally's Baking Addiction, which is my new favorite baking blog.

The recipe sounded intriguing and incredibly simple, so I was sold. Her recipe for Almond Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies calls for only 5(!) ingredients and no flour, so my gluten-free friends will be happy about that. Coincidentally, I found out that "Gluten Free Friday" was a thing, so it's appropriate that I made these today. (Disclaimer: I did NOT make these because they were gluten free. I made them because they sounded delicious).

The recipe calls for almond butter, which you can apparently make yourself. Sally does, so I thought: why not? I will too. Her instructions for almond butter can be found at the link above, but essentially you throw 3 cups of almonds into a food processor (or heavy duty blender) and nuke them for some number of minutes. It's actually a LOT of minutes. I stopped counting after 10, but it was probably 15-20mins of serious food processor action, stopping it every minute to scrape the sides. The almond butter was steaming from the friction of the blades by the time it was done. I may stick to buying my own due to laziness from now on, but was pleasantly surprised by how well it turned out.

Anyhow, back to the cookies... The recipe includes almond butter, light brown sugar, eggs, baking soda, and chocolate chips.

I had more almond butter than the recipe called for, but not quite double. I wanted to use it all up to have more cookies, so I had to 1.5x the recipe. This may have been a bad call... I didn't *precisely* measure out half an egg and I didn't have exactly 1.5x the almond butter. Meh, whatever, not like baking is a science or anything...

I started to follow the recipe and incorporate everything together by hand. I tried a spatula, then upgraded to a wooden spoon, but I couldn't get the chocolate chips to incorporate into the batter. So I was like, eff this, where is my mixer?  The batter was super greasy and stiff from the almond butter, so I dumped the whole thing into my KitchenAid. That was a fail too, as it basically all clumped together like dough, and the whole lump almost flew out of my mixer. It was at this point that I was like, "Shit, I already posted and TOLD people I was baking these cookies. I am going to have to SHOW these to people!" I turned off the mixer and got out the spatula again, and did the best I could to mix everything together.

The batter looked super oily, not at ALL like the ones in Sally's pictures. Oh well, it is what it is. Let's hope for the best. Into the oven they go.

I should note that my cookie/ice cream scoop took a beating from this batter. I seriously think I might need to replace it.

I am grateful that the cookies looked much better coming out than they did going in.

They didn't look anything like Sally's, but I liked how puffy and fluffy they were.

My 1.5x version of the recipe made 26 cookies.

I devoured 2 cookies as soon as I was done taking pictures. You honestly can't tell that there is no flour or butter in these. They are perfectly chewy and delicious.

Yum.

Overall they were a success, and even though they cannot compare to my favorite chocolate chip cookies (which I'll blog about someday), they are a great healthier alternative!