These chocolate chip cookies may look ordinary, but they are everything but! They are super cookies (gluten-free, vegan, sugar-free, low-carb, high-protein, and keto) made a raw flour mix consisting of 50% almonds and 50% cauliflowers.
Cauliflowers, yes! Incredible, we know. But if we were to give you one of these cookies without telling what's in it, you would never guess the secret ingredient. It's amazing as you get all the healthy benefits of the marvellous cauliflower, without overly altering the classic taste of cookies.
Excuse the enthusiasm, but we are so very excited about it. Using cauliflower as a flour substitute in bakes has huge nutritional benefits and can help us design even healthier gluten-free, vegan, and keto recipes.
For example, for this gluten-free recipe, we may have used 50% almonds and 50% oats, or coconut flour. But by using shredded cauliflowers instead, we reduced the number of resulting fats and carbs by half! A dream for all the folks on a weight-loss or low-carb diet.
Good news: baking with cauliflower couldn't be simpler. Whether you are using wheat flours or gluten-free flours, you can swap up to 50% with grated cauli florets and be on your merry way.
Overall, a portion of these cookies (2 cookies) gives you 1.9% carbs, 3% sugars, and 11% fibres of your recommended daily intakes (RDI). When you compare weight-by-weight these biscuits with a Starbucks cookie, you'll get eleven times fewer sugars and half the saturated fats. But you'll feel 100% good about yourself! Follow the simple steps below, and you'll be crunching on these yummies in no time.
NOTE: The default ingredients yield 16 cookies and one serving consists of two biscuits.
Should I cook cauliflowers to turn them into flour?
When using cauliflower in bakes, you don't have to cook it. Cooking it will only take away some of its awesome nutritional benefits.
Instead, just grate or blitz the cauliflower in as tiny pieces as you can, and mix with another suitable flour base. We talk more about the types of flours you can use with cauliflower below.
What else can I use instead of chia seeds to make these cookies vegan?
If you don't want to use chia seeds as an egg-replacement, you have a few other options.
Make a "flax-egg" by soaking flaxseeds with water, just like you would with chia seeds.
Use a ripe, mashed banana. You can substitute one eggs for one mashed banana.
Use silken tofu. You can use 70 grams (2.5 oz) of silken tofu for one egg.
Which flours can I use together with cauliflower flour?
In our cauliflower chocolate chip cookies, we used 50% shredded cauliflowers and 50% almond flour to make the dough. We like almonds because their delicate flavour pairs well with caulies.
If you want to use something other than almond flour, here are a few ideas:
oat flour
coconut flour
wheat flour (for non-gluten-free recipes)
chickpea flour (good for savoury bakes)
As long as you use a good binder (like eggs, or vegan chia-eggs), you can pretty much use any flours you can think of. Make sure that the flavour of the flours you use is a good match for the recipe you are making.
What is almond meal? And can I make it from scratch?
Almond meal is a flour-like powder made with raw, unpeeled almonds. It differs from the common almond flour which is instead prepared from blanched, peeled nuts.
We prefer using almond meal as it retains more fibres and it can be made at home with zero effort.
Just blitz the nuts in a powerful food processor until they're finely ground. The almond meal has a darker colour and coarser texture than the flour, but it works just as fine in gluten-free bakes like these cookies.
What can I use instead of erythritol?
Erythritol is a zero-calorie natural sweetener. It tastes almost as sweet sugar, but it doesn't get digested and absorbed so that it won't cause blood glucose to spike.
Erythritol is the perfect sugar substitute in sugar-free baking if you're following a ketogenic diet or have diabetes.
If you don't have it at hand, you can replace it with stevia, honey, maple, dried fruit like raisins, or a mashed banana.
Ingredients
| Chia Seeds | 1 tbsp |
| Water | 3 tbsp |
| Fresh Cauliflower Florets | 170 g |
| Almond Meal | 150 g |
| Erythritol | 60 g |
| Baking Powder | 1 tsp |
| Cashew Butter | 65 g |
| Dark Chocolate 85% | 80 g |
Step 1
Soak the chia seeds in water for 10 minutes in the fridge. As they absorb the water, they will swell and form a thick, gel-like mixture (1).
Meanwhile, trim the cauliflowers removing the stems and then add the florets to a food processor. Blitz until they're finely ground, similar to rice grains (2).
Step 2
Now, add the prepared "chia-egg" and cauliflower flour to a bowl.
Then, tip in the almond meal, erythritol, baking powder, and nut butter.
Give all a good stir and add the dark chocolate chopped into small chunks.
Work the mixture with you hands until it comes together into a compact and slightly sticky dough.
If it's too wet, add more almond flour, or, if too hard and crumbly, pour in a splash of water or almond milk.
Step 3
For each cookie, pinch off a walnut-sized portion of dough and roll it into a ball. Then, flatten it onto a baking tray lined with parchment paper, pressing down with your fingertips.
Repeat this step until you have used all the dough.
Step 4
Bake the cookies in the preheated oven for 12-15 minutes at 200°C (390°F) for static ovens or at 180°C (355°F) for fan ovens.
Finally, place the biscuits onto a wire rack to let them cool down evenly and crisp up.
Tips
If you keep the dough in the fridge for 15 minutes, it will harden, and it will be easier to shape into cookies.
Like this recipe? Try these other no-flour cookie recipes next: almond pulp cookies, coconut flour mango cookies, keto pecan sandies, and oat applesauce cookies.