photo provided courtesy of elanaspantry.com

It snowed this weekend (In Seattle that is kind of a big deal). My boyfriend and I decided to go for a walk and make these cookies. We walked the mile or so through the snow to the natural foods store to pick up the ingredients I didn’t have on hand, which was most of them. Luckily, this recipe was very simple and only had a few ingredients, so we didn’t have much to carry (or rather, the boyfriend didn’t)! It was so cute, the checker at the store saw all of our items on the belt and asked “Is this a recipe from Elana’s Pantry?” Yes, indeed.

I found that a lot of items I normally buy in their packaged form can be found in the bulk section. This saves a lot of packaging, as well as money. It also meant that I wasn’t left with a lot of leftover ingredients from making just one recipe.

Admittedly, we used Bob’s Red Mill Blanched Almond Flour, a brand Elana does not recommend for her recipes. We found that we needed a little more flour than the recipe called for, but it worked. The cookies ran more than those in the picture, but that could have been because I scooped out bigger portions of the dough than the recipe recommended as I wanted to make more of a breakfast bar.

I was so excited to come across this recipe. Almonds are full of protein, healthy fats, and fiber. And grapeseed oil has a lot of omega-3 fatty acids. The dark chocolate chips add very little sugar and a lot of indulgence, and the cookies are sweetened with agave syrup. Not to mention the recipe was very simple and quick to make.

These were wonderful with my morning coffee. I was having a bit of a rushed morning, and it was great to have something healthy and homemade on hand to grab on my way out the door! I will most certainly be baking these again.