Chufa Chocolate Chippers

Are you a "chunky" type of chocolate chipper? Growing up, you'd never catch me with chunks of anything other than chocolate in my cookies - raisins, chopped nuts and seeds, granola were verboten by us kids, and my poor chocolate chip-pecan-oatmeal cookie loving mom obliged year after year, batch after batch. Eventually I started to come around to the "heartier" side of things, but I never really liked the semi-bitter flavour that walnuts and pecans brought to the sweet party, not to mention I could barely bring "nutted" goodies anywhere anyway, after the explosion of allergies in schools, camps and even some offices.

Luckily, as years passed and I started paying attention to alternative options, I devised a recipe that had all the texture my mom (and many others) desired, but was allergy-friendly too. In the end, the basic formula switched extremes in a way - from being packed with nuts, eggs, dairy, refined sugar and gluten to lacking every single one of those. My secret was a blend of sorghum flour, ground chufa nuts (AKA Tigernuts) and sunflower seed flour for the base "dough" - making for a sweet and earthy cookie - then adding chopped Tigernuts for texture and a stevia/agave mix for sweetening. A few batches in and I was starting to get requests for them - leading to a bag of them in everyone's Christmas boxes last year!

A note, which applies to almost all gluten free baking and certainly good chocolate chip cookie manufacturing: let the dough rest. In this case, it's not to relax the gluten (there isn't any!) but to allow the dough to hydrate - no sandy gluten free cookies!

Shared with Gluten Free Fridays (#200!)

Chufa Chocolate Chippers
Makes 24
¼ cup canola oil
¼ tsp stevia extract powder
½ tsp vanilla
⅓ cup water
1 tbsp agave nectar
100g tigernut flour
50g sunflower seed flour
50g sorghum flour
1 tbsp ground flaxseed
½ tsp guar gum
pinch nutmeg
¼ tsp salt
¼ tsp baking soda
⅓ cup miniature chocolate chips
¼ cup chopped tigernuts (optional)

1. In a bowl, beat together the oil, stevia, vanilla, water and corn syrup until blended.
2. Beat in the flours, flaxseed, nutmeg, salt and baking soda.
3. Fold in the chocolate chips and tigernuts.
4. Cover and refrigerate 1 hour.
5. Preheat the oven to 350F and line cookie sheets with parchment.
6. Scoop 1 tbsp balls of dough and flatten slightly.
7. Bake 15-18 minutes. Cool on the sheet.

Amount Per Serving
Calories: 85.9
Total Fat: 5.5 g
Cholesterol: 0.0 mg
Sodium: 0.2 mg
Total Carbs: 9.3 g
Dietary Fiber: 2.9 g
Protein: 2.3 g