Welcome to week 2 of Treat of the Week. As promised, here is my recipe for some lovely, chocolaty cookies made with the fruit juice reduction we made earlier in the week. Sunspire makes some grain sweetened chocolate chips, which are perfect if you are looking to be completely cane sugar free.
Juicy Chocolate Cookies
1 3/4 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour
1/3 cup baking cocoa, sifted
1 teas. baking powder
1/2 teas. baking soda
1/4 teas. salt
1/2 cup margarine, slightly softer than room temperature
3/4 cup fruit juice reduction, apple or white grape are the best
2 tbsp. unsweetened applesauce
1 teas. vanilla extract
1/3 cup grains sweetened chocolate chips
Preheat oven to 350. Line baking sheets with parchment, if using.
In a small bowl, combine the flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In a large bowl, combine the margarine, fruit juice reduction, applesauce and vanilla and mix until it looks fairly combined (will look kind of, well, gross honestly). In batches, add the dry ingredients to the wet until well incorporated. Add the chocolate chips.
Scoop cookies by the tablespoon, approximately 2 inches apart, onto the prepared baking sheet. Bake for 9-10 minutes, until the cookies have spread and edges are set. Remove from oven and let cool on sheets, on a cooling rack, for 10 minutes before removing from sheet to finish cooling on rack. Store leftover cookies loosely covered at room temperature.
Yields 2 1/2 dozen cookies
Yay, treat of the week! Those look delicious, yet another recipe I’ll be making soon.
Aw, thanks Jojo!
Ooh these look so chewy and dense and chocolatey and delicious! I’ll have to try the fruit juice reduction, as I’m always looking to cut back on the amount of sugar I use.
It’s definitely a great way to reduce the source of sugar. They have a really pleasant texture and are super moist.
Those seem to be yummy little chewy cookies! Oh, I bet a chocolate-orange version (with an orange juice reduction) would be delicious…
Ooh, yes that would be delicious. Sounds really Christmasy.
Yay–thanks so much for sharing that recipe. It looks great. Is white grape really better than purple grape juice for the reduction? I have grape juice, but not *white* grape juice in the freezer…
Courtney
You could try regular grape juice, but I’m thinking it will probably have a slightly more pronounced flavor. Not necessarily a bad thing, though…
Ooh, very nice looking. I made apple juice sweetened almond cookies last night and am pretty pleased with them. I can only imagine chocolate making everything even better!
Yum, those sound awesome. Will you be blogging about them?
http://feudfood.blogspot.com/2011/03/ask-me-about-my-breakfast.html
This is them. I did add some cane sugar as well because it wasn’t a juice reduction like yours and it was my first time baking juice sweetened, so I was a little nervous to cut out cane sugar completely, but they were plenty sweet. Do you think I could use only apple juice if I worked with a reduction?
Those sound great.
I think you could totally get away with doing the reduction for those cookies… I think you could do 1/3 cup of the reduction and then add maybe 1-2 tbsp. additional milk to make up for the viscosity gained from the sugar. Granulated sugar definitely affects the mouthfeel, so they would be more cake-type cookies.
Is there a way to make them without being chocolate-chocolate chip cookies? Do I just take out the cocoa and replace it with more flour? HELP!
Don’t get me wrong, I’m SO making it this way too, but just for another choc.chip cookie option 🙂
My reason for adding the chocolate is to help mask the flavor of the fruit juice reduction. It has a presence, not a bad presence, but one nonetheless. You could replace the cocoa with 1/2 the cocoa measurement of additional flour.
Our whole family has gone to a sugar, gluten, dairy free diet. I and two of my daughters are allergic to eggs. Is there an alternative flour we can use? I can ask the health food store but didnt know from your personal experience if you would reccommend one. Thanks!
Janine from Colorado
Hi Janine-
There is no catch-all substitution, sadly, because gluten-free flours need to be blended to have a similar consistency to wheat. I would suggest getting some flour blends from places like Bob’s Red Mill and starting there. You can get an idea of what flours your family like the taste of (commonly, they have a rice flour base, which can vary from very smooth and tender to kind of gritty). I tend to use a blend of brown rice flour, tapioca starch and some guar gum, but I only have recipe specific proportions, not a basic blend. There is a great website resources called xgfx that is full of gluten-free, vegan recipes and info. Hope that gets you going in the right direction!