Healthy Cookies Recipe from Liza kids love

Healthy Cookies Recipe Kids Love and Make came from Liza D., mother of 4 kids ages 7 and under! Liza’s favorite family healthy recipe that sugar free, eggs free, whole foods ingredients, dairy free and super easy and quick to make. Liza makes Healthy Cookies often and her young kids love and make them on their own. When we met and shared our favorite Grandma Favorite Candy recipe, we realized the recipes were almost identical except for one additional step – baking. Cookies are soft and pleasant on texture. If you prefer soft texture cookies, bake them around 10 minutes, if crunchies – leave them for a few minutes longer. Hope you will enjoy them as much as we do!

Healthy Cookies Recipe

Read the Science Behind Healthy Cookies Recipe at the end of this blog.

If you do not have time to bake, you can remove such ingredients as soda and lemon juice and freeze without baking. In this case, look at our Grandmas Healthy Candy recipe.

Don’t have time to shape the cookies, spread them flat on a baking sheet and make Healthy Brownies.

Easy, quick, no-bake, whole-food, plant-based, vegan, keto, healthy ingredients.

INGREDIENTS

• 1 and 1/2 cup – raw pecans and walnuts (or any other nuts)
• 1 cup –  dried dates (soak prior, if you wish)
• 1/4 cup – water (or almond milk)
• 1/4 cup – ground flax seeds (and/or other seeds)
• spices to taste ( ceylon cinnamon, turmeric, cardamon, etc)
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tbsp lemon juice (or apple vinegar, juice, buttermilk)
• pinch of salt

TOOLS:

• Food Processor (the best) or
• Knife or Blender may work

VARIATIONS:

• Ingredients and proportions change according to your taste. 
• No time to shape cookies, lay the batter on a baking sheet 
• No time to bake, shape and freeze without baking soda and lemon juice – ready to eat

STEPS:

1. Measure ingredients, pour lemon juice on top of soda, blend everything in a food processor 
2. Use a spoon to shape cookies on a baking sheet
3. Bake 10 min or longer at 350F (shorter time to bake makes them soft, longer time – crunchier)
4. Let them cool and enjoy!

SCIENCE BEHIND:

The foundation of any cookie recipe consists of a few main ingredients: fat, sweetener, flour, a rising agent, a binding agent, xanthan gum, and salt.

Fat adds flavor and affects how chewy or crunchy the cookies are. More fat – chewier, less fat – crunchier. This recipe the blended nuts give the fat cookies need.

Sweetener is a tenderizer, while controlling how much the cookie spreads. This recipe has dates as a sweetener.

Binding agents are the liquid in the recipe that holds the cookie together like eggs, milk, honey, or fruit juice. This recipe doesn’t use eggs but we used dairy-free  milk or water. 

Flour is a stabilizer and thickener and controls how much the cookie rises. It holds it together. This recipe goes with ground nuts but you can add or substitute with Almond Flour, which leaves the gluten behind and creates flatter and denser structure. 

Rising agent or leavener most commonly used is either baking soda or baking powder (make sure to use aluminium free). If you use baking soda, your recipe must include another acidic ingredient, like lemon juice, vinegar, buttermilk. Baking soda increases browning and spreading, resulting in a flatter cookie. Baking powder will give you a puffier cookie but because it has starch, they become more sandy.

Xanthan gum (guar gum in some cases) stabilizes emulsions, increasing the viscosity of the mixture so that the oil and vinegar stay together longer and so that spices stay suspended. Xanthan gum also creates a smooth, pleasant texture in many foods and undetectable. To add 1/4 tsp of Xanthan gum is a great idea.

Salt is another important ingredient in cooking – breads, cookies, cakes and so on. A little salt added to grains will keep them from absorbing a lot of the cooking water so that they retain their shape. Salt enhances and intensifies food’s flavor in cookies. As we didn’t use grains, we skipped this step but a pinch of salt might be a good idea to put.