Challenge time!! Starting from today, I will be baking everyday until December 30th. Throughout this challenge, I’ll use my old recipes as well as some new ones. So, let’s get started. First day: the best chocolate-chip cookies!! (Standard recipe: here, healthier version: here)

As for chocolate-chips, I crushed a variety of chocolate bars, including this, this and a gianduja bar from Venchi. I wish I put some white chocolate too, but the taste was nevertheless amazing. The cookies were soft, moist and full of chocolate!

I served these in a round tin covered with parchment paper. So easy, let looks so elegant!

By the way, who needs a DSLR when there is Instagram, the lazy person’s best friend!

This is it! This is the BEST chocolate-chip cookie recipe ever! And what’s better is that it’s way much healthier than your average chocolate-chip cookie. Impossible? Well, I don’t think so.

There’s usually a problem with “healthy” alternatives: they usually cannot replicate the “original” one. I’ve tried so many healthy chocolate-chip cookie alternatives, but the result was usually so bad that I didn’t even want to eat them. Now, I have to want you beforehand, if you are looking for low-fat or low-calorie chocolate-chip cookies, then this is not the place to look for. Besides, I don’t think there exists a chewy, delicious and full chocolate-chip cookie recipe that is also low in fat and calories. Well, you can use low-fat-vegan-margarine type artificial “things” (I don’t even call them food), but I don’t think they are healthy, and taste good. In fact, you immediately notice that something is wrong with those cookies. But my recipe is different! Despite being high in fats (healthy fats) and carbs (healthy carbs), if you eat in considerable amounts, I think these cookies make a great afternoon snack with a cup of tea. Mmmm!

Now you may be expecting a complex, fifteen ingredient, protein-powder boosted recipe, but no. This recipe originally uses Sinem’s chocolate-chip cookie recipe, which is already lower in sugar and fat, but not less delicious than regular chewy c-chip cookie recipes. But it has two ingrediential (is that a word?) problems that makes it a little unhealthy: butter and processed sugar. Now, I have to say that I’m not cursing butter. I think you should consume it now and then, but I would like to use my “butter quota” by spreading on a slice of bread, not in cookies. So, I don’t usually use butter in my recipes.

So first of all, I looked for something that can replace butter. I actually knew the answer for a while. It’s obviously coconut oil, which is solid in room temperature. That’s why you get real cookies when you make it with coconut oil (believe me, I tried some cookies with olive oil, and I don’t want to talk about the results). Coconut oil is also a healthier alternative to butter, since it has no cholesterol. Because of its high saturated fatty acid content, I wouldn’t want to use it everyday, but I have been wanting to try coconut oil in a recipe for a while. I like to use different things in my recipes. Remember my dark hummus? Or maybe purple carrot muffins?

But coconut oil is not something you can find everywhere, unless you live in the United States and have Whole Foods or a similar store nearby. So, I have been searching the web for quite a while to find coconut oil, among with some other things like Artisana Coconut Butter that everyone’s obsessed with, or raw cocoa nibs. But, unless you want to pay huge amount of money for shipping and customs, there’s no way you can supply these stuff in Turkey, even though there are lots of places that sell coconut oil as massage oil, which cannot be used as cooking oil.

Wait, there’s another way! Place an order to your friend who will visit the States! So, I ordered some coconut oil, coconut butter, raw cocoa nibs and some palm sugar from my friend. This may seem to be a temporary solution, but I won’t be using the coconut oil everyday, and I think I found a store in Turkish Ebay that sells edible coconut oil.

The second “ingrediential” problem was the processed sugar, and it was solved by Navitas Naturals’ palm sugar. Palm sugar is considered to be a healthier alternative to cane sugar (or, beet sugar for Turkey) since it’s lower in glycemic index and more nutritious. And it has a caramel-like taste, which I immediately liked. So, I decided to incorporate this to my recipe.

If you have access to coconut oil and palm sugar, I urge you to try this recipe. I stored a batch of cookies in the freezer. So, I just take them out in the morning and by the time I get to work, they are ready! And they usually become my afternoon snack with a cup of tea. So good!

Coconut Oil and Palm Sugar Chocolate Chip Cookies

adapted from Sinem’s recipe

makes 16 cookies

Ingredients:

• 1 egg
• 75 gr (2.6 oz.) coconut oil, in room temperature
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• ½ cup palm sugar, or any other semi-processed alternative
• ¾ cup dark chocolate chips
• 1 tablespoon milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• pinch of salt
• cocoa nibs to sprinkle

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 175 degrees C (350 degrees F).

Mix together palm sugar and coconut butter until the mixture becomes creamy, then beat in the egg.

Add the other ingredients.

Drop 1 tablespoon of dough on a parchment paper. Be sure to have space between the cookies. Sprinkle with some cocoa nibs.

Bake the cookies for 13 minutes, or until the edges turn golden.

And what about the “famous” Artisana Coconut Butter I got? I made a batch of Katie’s chocolate fudge, and they were amazing!

Well, the actual title of this post should be “Sour Cherry Chocolate Chip Honey Semolina Muffins”, which would tell more about the ingredients, but it was so long that I sticked with this one. Since the freezer is full of sour cherries and we can’t eat them raw with sick stomacks (we all have gastritis & reflux in family), it’s better to use them in desserts. This is yet another semolina muffin recipe, if you remember the one with apples. I really like to put semolina in muffins, because semolina gives a nice texture and I think it increases the nice smell I get from the muffins (and I don’t know why).

This recipe also uses honey; because I don’t want to use too much processed stuff in my recipes, and sugar can easily be replaced with honey in cakes, and it also makes them moist, which I do like. So, enjoy!

Sour Cherry Chocolate Chip Honey Semolina Muffins

makes 15 small muffins

Ingredients:

• 3 eggs
• 1 cup whole-wheat flour
• 1 cup semolina
• ½ cup honey
• ¼ cup olive oil
• 2 cups sour cherries (or 1 ½ cup pureed sour cherries)
• 2 teaspoons baking soda + 2 teaspoons baking powder (or 4 teaspoons of either one*)

* Actually, it does matter which one you use. The difference is, baking soda needs some acidic compound to rise; while baking powder also has some acidic salts to do that. So we add 2 teaspoons baking soda, which will be activated by sour cherries, and 2 teaspoons baking powder for the rest. Why 2 teaspoons? I don’t know, I just made it up. Maybe the sour cherries are enough to activate 4 teaspoons of baking soda. I don’t care about these things for these messy kind of recipes, where the taste is more important than the looks. By the way, I learned these stuff from Robert Wolke’s “What Einstein Told His Cook“. GREAT book, it has lots of useful information about food and cooking.

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees C (350 degrees F).

Beat the eggs with honey and olive oil and sour cherries. Add ther dry ingredients and pour the batter into muffin cups.

Bake for 20 minutes.

I said I won’t be posting dessert recipes for a while, but these cookies changed my mind. Sinem made those for our project visit to Istanbul, and we all enjoyed them during the flight and at the hotel. Normally, I’m not into those buttery chocolate chip cookies, but these were quite yummy that we all got the recipe from her.

Sinem’s Chocolate Chip Cookies

adapted from Women’s Weekly

makes about 20 cookies

Ingredients:

• 1 egg
• 75 gr (2.6 oz.) butter
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• ½ cup brown sugar
• ¾ cup chocolate chips
• 1 tablespoon milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• pinch of salt

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 175 degrees C (350 degrees F).

Mix together sugar and butter until the mixture becomes creamy, then beat in the egg.

Add the other ingredients.

Drop 2 tablespoons (or ½ cup, if you want bigger cookies) of dough on a parchment paper. Be sure to have space between the cookies.

Bake the cookies for 13-15 minutes. Time depends on your preference. If you want crispier cookies, bake for 15+ minutes. If you want smoother cookies on the inside, bake less.