It’s Laurel here, making a cameo on the Athlete Food blog, while Bec attempts to relax in her final days before baby. As you may remember from our Pecan Pie Smackdown, I’m not much for baking. I like the idea of eating fresh baked goods, but the measuring and cleaning required takes me out of my comfort zone. A few weeks ago, however, I received a lovely care package from Elizabeth Stein founder of the gluten-free and all natural baking company, purely elizabeth. The box included a chocolate chip cookie mix easy and healthy enough that I thought I’d risk another kitchen experiment.
Of course, on the morning I’d set aside to make the cookies, I forgot to read the “you will need” part of the recipe on the side of the box. Luckily, this recipe calls for only three ingredients and I had one of them. The oil. It was fancy olive oil that I use to dress salads, but at least it was oil. No such luck for the applesauce and vanilla extract. I found a can of pumpkin puree behind my stash of chocolate ZICO and was all set to crack it open when I thought, maybe I should ask Bec what she thinks.
It’s just this sort of substitution that usually turns my cooking endeavors from acceptable to inedible. Bec assured me that the pumpkin would work just fine. She suggested that I add ground ginger when I asked her what to do about the lack of vanilla extract. With some stroke of luck, my roommate had a small jar of ginger in his section of the pantry and I figured he probably wouldn’t notice if a teaspoon of it went missing.
Now I was ready. I mixed the ingredients in a sauce pan (because how many people in NYC have a set of mixing bowls?) and panicked: the batter was more mahogany than the typical camel color of traditional cookie dough. Then I remembered that with a mix of almond, fava, and millet flours, plus chia seeds and coconut sugar, this was not like other cookie doughs.
That’s why the cookies look dark in the pictures. I assure you I didn’t overcook them! I may not have interned at Tartine like Melissa or worked at a bakery for the last 10 years like Bec, but I do know that it is better to err on the side of undercooking cookies. Nobody wants to bite into a hard chocolate chip cookie. I’m happy to report that after 12 minutes in the oven, my cookies were perfectly done.
I could have eaten all 12 cookies right off of the tray, but limited myself to 2 before my afternoon swim and then brought the rest to Bec’s apartment.
If you decide to make these cookies (which I suggest that you do), I do have one tip. Check the oven before you turn it on. Since those of us who don’t cook regularly find the oven to be more useful as a storage space, you might want to be sure it’s empty before turning it on. I didn’t have a stack of sweaters in there this time, but I did have a few pots and casserole dishes that had to be removed after they were heated to 350° F.
Thanks again to Elizabeth for fueling my workouts and Bec's babywatch this January. Next time we'll make the original recipe, but for now we can't stop eating this gingery version.
—Laurel
purely elizabeth Chocolate Chip Cookies with Ginger
what you'll need:
1 box of purely elizabeth (gluten-free. vegan. free of refined sugar.) chocolate chip cookie mix
1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 cup pumpkin puree (this can be from a can or even baby food)
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
how to:
Follow the instructions on the side of the box, substituting pumpkin puree for the applesauce and ginger for the vanilla extract.
