Grain Free Almond Chocolate Chip Cookies

You'll notice, if you haven't already, that my recipes are heavier in the bakery, snack, breakfast categories than in meals and fully plated presentations. That's for no other reasons than these:

• I love baking and experimenting with lots of fun flours and other ingredients to create nutritious alternatives to what's normally non-nourishing. 
• I love eating bakery goods and I spend a lot of my day snacking. Therefore, I have been intrigued with making over recipes that offer the girls and I heathy morsels to munch on throughout the day. 

Because of my baking obsession, when we are out and about eating our homemade foods a common question I hear is....

"YOU eat THAT?"

Ummm...yes. I do and I enjoy it! 

When someone sees me eating or giving one of my girls a cookie, a cupcake, a muffin or anything else that doesn't appear 'healthy', it doesn’t seem to match my living well ways. But, you see, eating well means so much more than simply what some might refer to as rabbit food! Our bodies need FAT, calories and carbohydrates to function properly. There is nothing I cringe at more than a carb-free diet mentality. I get grain free (sorta), gluten free (when advantageous) and I certainly get purging all the processed junk. But, to eliminate entire food groups containing nourishing elements is simply insane!

Oh and the other eating insanity I wish to ‘fix’ here at Happily Whole is ‘failure to enjoy food’! That, to me, is a lifestyle fiasco. We need to eat—multiple times a day. God gave us bread…He gave us a life to sustain…a life He wants us to enjoy. So, following that logic, why not enjoy life with the nourishment we eat all day long.

With that, I will step away from my soapbox and return to the inquiry at hand, ‘YOU eat THAT?’. The answer is YES, I eat food that looks, feels and tastes good to me. I give the same kinds of food to my girls. Here’s how this works:

• We eat REAL foods, unprocessed and highly nutrient dense.
• We use REAL ingredients to make our own bakery items. So when you see us eating something that looks like a real indulgence, it IS A REAL-FOOD INDULGENCE from the time that goes into it to the ingredients used to make it.
• We eat foods our bodies need which include fats, healthy carbohydrates and both animal and vegetarian proteins. Not to mention a plethora of plant-based nutrients every day.
• We do not avoid any particular food group however, we do avoid non-real-food groups such as foods containing dyes and/or chemicals and have been processed, refined and/or bleached.

So, there you have it! I love to bake. I love to eat often. I love a little bit of sweetness every day. And, all the while I am a REAL FOOD Foodie!

These almond flour cookies fall into the ‘YOU eat THAT?’ category. I started experimenting more with almond flour for its nutritional profile in comparison to traditional flours. Just to mention a few: Vitamin E, omega 3s, plant proteins, multiple nut-common minerals. Almond meal or flour definitely bakes up differently and offers a unique yet pleasing flavor. But we have developed a liking to it here at the Oldham home.

Then, considering the lack of white/bleached sugars and less favorable fats, they offer a nice, mildly sweet treat. Try them and see for yourself!