My awesome neighbor (one who comes over for covert s’mores) left a couple of wonderful little cookies and a well-worn cookbook on my counter the other day. So, I fully agave-ized the recipe and made a batch tonight. Here’s the converted recipe. Enjoy!

No-Sugar Oatmeal Chocolate-Chip Walnut Cookies

-1 1/2 cups rolled oats
-1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
-1/4 teaspoon sea salt
-1/2 cup agave nectar
-1/2 teaspoon maple flavor
-1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
-1 teaspoon vanilla extract
-1/3 cup chopped walnuts (remember, these are bad for pets)
-1/3 cup grain-sweetened chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350.
Combine oats, flour and salt in a bowl and set aside.
In a separate bowl, mix together agave, maple flavor, butter and vanilla.
Add wet and dry ingredients together and mix well.
Stir in nuts and chips.

Wet your hands and form 3-inch cookies. Place onto lightly greased cookie sheet.
Bake for 15-20 mins. until edges begin to brown.

To make vegan, sub margarine for butter and use vegan chocolate chips.

This recipe makes 12 3-inch cookies, or you can make 24 2-bite cookies.

I’m eating one now…yum.

Have you read “The Secret”? I have. All that stuff about creating your reality and manifesting your thoughts – I pretty much believe that. Not because of some fabulous riches that I’ve created in my life, no, because of the random-ass stuff that pops up when I’m not paying attention to my thoughts.

Today, on the way home from work, I stopped to by toilet paper and tea – you know, the staples. I considered whether I had all the ingredients at home to make my no-sugar super-yummy cookies, as there are currently none in the house. As I was leaving the store, I walked past what I think was a lesbian family in a Volvo station wagon. Coming from the car was a song cranked up loud on the stereo. I was mildly annoyed until I realized what I was hearing: “C is for cookie, that’s good enough for me!” It was Cookie Monster! I love him! “C is for cookie, that’s good enough for me. C is for cookie, that’s good enough for me! Oh, cookie, cookie, cookie starts with C.”

Awesome! It totally put a smile on my face as I climbed into my car singing, “cookie, cookie, cookie…”

I got home, greeted the animals and put up the toilet paper. I changed into shorts and a bikini top and headed out to level the backyard with the dirt we’d dug up this weekend at our work party. It was an awesome day – 90 degrees, and in the shade at 5PM, it was glorious! Shovel in hand, I was still singing about cookies.

Then I smelled it…

Not a mile from the house there’s a Kraft/Nabisco plant. They make Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and Keebler cookies. That assessment is based on the smells that come wafting by every time they fire up the plant. Sometimes, there’s cheesy goodness on the air. Other times, it’s the Elves and their cookies that you can smell. Today, as I shoveled, the Elves taunted me.

I was good this morning. There were brownie samples at the bagel place, AND I DIDN’T HAVE ANY. For a recovering sugar addict, that’s a big thing.

Smelling what I imagined to be vanilla sandwich cookies, you know, the rectangular ones, I cursed the Keebler Elves. Usually I’m a fan of elves, but these bastards were just being cruel. It was like I was Charlie Buckett living in the shadow of Mr. Wonka’s factory, ONLY THERE’S NO GOLDEN TICKET.

After about 30 minutes the Elves were done, or the wind shifted, or I became immune to the sugary smell. I finished the yard work and headed inside to cook dinner. The Elves could taunt me, but they couldn’t break me. I have my cookies, my beautiful, wonderful cookies – and they don’t have uber-processed sugar or preservatives. I considered making a batch tonight. Sadly, however, I spent three hours playing Rock Band instead. I bet elves make that game, too.

About a year and a half ago I gave up refined sugar (for the most part).

On the way home from a bridal shower where I’d come alive from an anti-social stupor after snarfing a large piece of the shower cake, Leigh said to me, “maybe we should give up the refined sugar for a while.”

Like the addict I was I lost it.  “You can’t do that!  There’s sugar in everything!  It’s just not possible.”

After about 5 minutes of rationalizing, I heard myself and realized I had a problem.  The two of us laughed hard and decided maybe we should give up the sugar for a while.  (By the way, refined sugar isn’t in EVERYTHING.)

Being the pastry freak that I am, this was a challenge.  The hardest part was dessert after dinner.  As my grandfather always says, “you must have a little gliko (Greek for ‘sweet’) after every meal!”  So, I set to work researching the best, most natural, least processed sugar-substitute that I could use in baking, and started searching the internet for recipes.  I settled on agave and found a great peanut butter chocolate chip cookie recipe that I modified to use agave instead of a fruit-sweetener.

These cookies keep me sane. I make them practically all the time so that there have been very few days in the last year when these cookies haven’t been in the house.  When I bring them to work, arguments can break out if I don’t bring one for everyone.  I know at least one other person who is nearly as fanatical as I am about making these cookies.  She uses these to control her diabetes.   Don’t worry though, even with the whole-wheat flower and nut butter, there’s nothing medicinal about how these cookies taste.  The might be the best thing ever.  I’m just saying.

I consider them open-source, so let me know if you make improvements on the recipe.

Enjoy!

No-Sugar Peanut Butter Chocolate-Chip Cookies:
– 1 cup natural style nut butter. I use unsalted peanut but you could use salted if you like better (you can also use almond)

– put 2 tablespoons of water in a 2/3 cup measure. Add agave syrup to fill the 2/3 measure (I prefer dark, but light works too)
– 1 generous tsp vanilla

– 1 cup whole wheat pastry flour (For wheat-free, sub barley flower, or oat.  For gluten-free sub quinoa flour.)
– 1 1/2 tsp baking soda
– 1/2 tsp salt

– About 3/4 cup grain sweetened chocolate chips – or dark chocolate chips if you can’t find grain sweetened

Oven to 350 degrees, parchment paper on two cookie sheets (or butter them, or use nothing at all). Mix wet ingredients in mixer, add dry ingredients, beat until combined. Stir in chocolate chips. Make balls with heaping Tbsp of dough, then squish with a wet fork to get the traditional pattern. I use all the dough to make 12 cookies. I bake Exactly 10 minutes if I want them chewy. (These are easy to overcook due to their color – so watch closely, and take out when they are just barely browning on top.  Maybe start with 8 mins and check the underside of one cookie, just to be safe.  For barley, oat or quinoa, you might want to bake longer.)

Enjoy!