I know I said I was only going to post on Sundays and Wednesdays, but I had “one of those days,” and needed a little baking therapy. So far this week I’ve made brownies, chocolate chip banana bread, and pumpkin muffins, so I decided to make it simple and comforting and just make your plain ol’ chocolate chip cookies. Mostly because I had leftover chocolate chips laying around. 

Normally when we make cookies we just follow the Nestle Tollhouse recipe that comes printed on the bag when you buy the chocolate chips. However, that recipe has recently kinda sucked a big one for us and I decided to do some research on the subject. Apparently recipes for chocolate chip cookies are pretty uniform across the board, so I did some tweaking and refining and, not to toot my own horn, think I came up with a pretty good end product. 

Heart Healthy Chocolate Chip Cookies!

What you’ll need:

• 1 cup coconut oil or butter (melted)
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 cup light brown sugar
• 3 cups all-purpose flour*
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 1 tablespoon Sprite or Sierra Mist (if you don’t have either, you can use water… will explain more thoroughly below.)
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup Egg Beaters
• Chocolate chips

Directions for SUCCESS!

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
2. Melt your coconut oil (or butter) in a medium sized microwaveable container. 
3. Measure out flour and salt into a separate bowl and set aside.
4. Once coconut oil is melted, pour in white sugar, then add the brown sugar and mix until smooth.
5. Add Egg Beaters slowly, distributing evenly and mixing until smooth, then add vanilla extract and continue to stir.
6. At this point, add your Sprite to your sugar mixture, and your baking soda to the flour/salt mixture you set aside. If you don’t have Sprite, mix baking soda and 1 tablespoon of water together until it’s mostly dissolved, then add it to your sugar mixture. The carbonation in the Sprite helps make the cookies a little more “airy” on the inside.
7. Pour your mixture into the bowl with the flour, salt, and baking soda. 
8. Add your desired amount of chocolate chip cookies and mix. I’m not going to tell you how many to use, because it will always be up for debate. I would eat the whole bag before I start baking if I didn’t need them.
9. Place spoonfuls of dough onto a LIGHTLY greased baking pan and place in your preheated oven.
10. Allow to bake for 10-12 minutes or until a soft brown.

Allow to cool, then ENJOY! 

*This recipe is NOT gluten free. However, if you would like to make it gluten free, the all-purpose flour can easily be replaced with rice or coconut flour!