Chocolate Oat Freezer Cookies

As I briefly mentioned in this recent post about dessert dilemmas, I like to keep light, flour-free, low-calorie treats on hand in my freezer. That way when I want something simple and sweet after dinner, I can just pop a delicious date bite into my mouth and call it a night. Easy. Satisfying. Health-friendly.

This pleases me. :)

This simple cookie recipe came out of a sweet find on my favorite blog, Oh She Glows. Chocolate cookies, that include oats (my favorite!), and live in the freezer. The chocolate gift that keeps on giving. Say no more! These are now a new companion for my little tub of date bites.

Angela's recipe calls for 1/4 cup chocolate chips. I made one batch according to her directions and of course they were yum! But then I got to thinking... While I don't mind using real chocolate as an infrequent treat here and there, I try to avoid refined sugar and cocoa fat as much as possible in my day-to-day diet. For more information on the important differences between cocoa and chocolate, watch this video here:

Cocoa Good, Chocolate Bad

And here:

Healthiest Chocolate Fix

As you can imagine, I'm elated, relieved, and THRILLED that a nutritarian diet can still include cocoa and that it actually boasts some fabulous nutrients and antioxidants, to boot. This is truly God's gift to my taste-buds!

So I tried to think of how I could make this great dessert idea 100% whole-foods and guilt-free. Instead of chocolate chips, I decided to combine 1/4 cup date paste and cacao powder for a delicious, chocolaty substitute.

And it totally worked. Success!

In the end I think I prefer the date paste version taste-wise, too (I don't know about you, but after months of avoiding refined sugar, it has become way too sweet for these buds!)

As she says in her recipe, these never truly harden and will quickly melt once they're removed from the cold. So store them in the freezer until you're ready to eat them.

Chocolate Oat Freezer Cookies

Lightly Adapted from Angela Liddon's recipe here

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• 1/4 cup date paste
• 3 tbsp cacao powder
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 medium banana, ripe
• 3/4 cup rolled oats (for gluten-free, make sure they are GF oats)
• 1 tbsp chia seeds 
• Optional add-ins: almond or mint extract
  

1. Add 1/4 cup date paste, cacao powder, and vanilla extract into a bowl. Slice up the banana and mas with a fork until most of the lumps are gone. 

2. Next add rolled oats and chia seeds and mix thoroughly. 

3. Line a large platter or cookie sheet (whichever will fit in your freezer) with parchment paper. Drop 10-12 spoonfuls of the oat batter onto the sheet and form cookies. 

4. Place in freezer and chill for at least 1 hour. You can store them in a tupperware after they've hardened. 

5. Resist reaching in the freezer to eat one every other 10 minutes. :) 

With only 64 calories and 1 gram of fat per cookie, you probably don't have to resist eating too many, however. :)

Home is Where the Candy Is!

For our second Valentine's Day as a married couple, and my first V-Day as a herbivore, we skipped the store and made our candy at home. I scored this awesome silicone candy mold for Zach this past Christmas and we finally got to put it to good use!

Z's favorite candy is chocolate PB cups, but the store bought ingredient list is eerily mysterious and crammed with not-so-great ideas. Thankfully Z likes to make his own at home, using just plain old chocolate and peanut butter! Now that's more whole-foods-like-it! I would love to make a truly whole-foods chocolate sauce using cacao and dates. That would really be a cause for celebration...

Hmm, next V-Day project?

As far as fillings, we branched out and also made some chocolate-covered raw almonds and peanuts for variety. And I'm pretty sure any time there's chocolate, the pairing options are endless. :)

Do you want in on this low-ingredient-goodness? All you have to do is grab some dairy-free baker's semi-sweet chocolate, follow my chocolate sauce directions from this post, and get a hold of some kind of candy mold. (Note: you're going to want to double or triple the amount of chocolate in this recipe).

Next, get some nut butters, coconut, fresh fruit, raisins, raw nuts... pretty much whatever you want to nestle inside chocolate and go to town!

1. Melt the chocolate on the stove top according to these instructions!

Sorry for the yellowish night-time photos!

2. Once melted and smooth, shut off stove but leave chocolate on warm burner, stirring occasionally.

3. With a small spoon, dab some chocolate in the bottom of each well, and rub your finger around in a circular motion so that the chocolate goes up the sides of the mold.

4. Next, add a small amount of preferred filling in each cup and cover with another dab of chocolate. Use finger or spoon to smooth over top and press down around filling - but be very gentle.

And don't worry too much about trying to attain candy-artisan perfection. They don't need to be flawless... just yummy. :)

5. Place in freezer to let chocolate set. Because this chocolate is diluted with liquid, it won't stay hard and tends to melt quickly, but you can store in the freezer short term (1-2 days) and the fridge for a bit longer!

Mmm. Simple, cheap, special treats. The husband was pleased.

I find the semi-sweet bakers chocolate too sugary for my tastes, so if you try using unsweetened chocolate and adding date paste or coconut sugar to it that would give you more control over the level of sweetness. But I can't vouch for how that turns out yet!

And of course candy can never really be a "health" food - that's why it's a treat! But when you read some of the ingredient labels on most of the franken-confections out there today, I will gladly splurge on one of these. :)

Hope you enjoyed your national day of chocolate, I mean love!