Easy Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

Chocolate chip cookies made healthy without sugar or sugar alcohols! No mixer required.

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Recipe

Easy Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

Cookies without a mixer?! Yep! This recipe is so easy that you can mix the entire batter by hand, and you don't have to ball the dough.

The Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie

The perfect chocolate chip cookie is slightly crunchy on the outer edge, chewy, soft and gooey towards the middle, and not overly chocolatey.

I REFUSED to sacrifice any of that when swapping all the sugar for honey.

It was NOT easy, but after almost 30 batches, I got it. (cue party explosion)

FAQs for Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipes

How do you make easy chocolate chip cookies from scratch?
- To make easy chocolate chip cookies from scratch you'll need to melt the butter so you don't have to cream the butter and sugar together. Not having to cream the butter and sugar means you don't need a mixer: you can mix the entire batter by hand.
- After mixing the butter and sweetener together, add the other wet ingredients and mix well. In a separate bowl, mix the dry ingredients together, then add the dry mixture to the wet mixture and mix until well combined.

How do you make healthy chocolate chip cookies from scratch?
- Swap the butter for a healthier fat like avocado or coconut oil. If you don't mind thick cookies, you can leave the fat out altogether and shape each cookie before baking.
- Sugar can be swapped with a preferred sweetener. If omitting the fat from the recipe, I suggest using honey as the sweetener because its moisture will help compensate for the missing fat.
- Use whole wheat flour or a gluten free flour.
- Use Lily's chocolate chips because they're sweetened with stevia.

What are the healthiest chocolate chips?
- Lily's brand are healthiest because they're sweetened with stevia which is a low calorie and low glycemic sweetener.

What makes cookies more chewy?
- Cookies get their chewy texture from the gluten from the flour and the moisture from the wet ingredients. Chewiness also comes from the technique or method used to mix the batter. All of these variables differ with each cookie recipe.

What ingredient makes soft cookies?
- Wet ingredients make cookies soft. In most recipes, the wet ingredients are butter and eggs. But the amount of each ingredient in the recipe is what makes a soft cookie.

How do you keep cookies from getting hard after baking?
- To keep cookies from getting hard after baking, store them in a closed container like plastic baggie or tubberware. You can also add a slice of bread to the container and the cookies will absorb the moisture from the bread.

Can I use honey instead of sugar in cookies?
- Replacing sugar with honey in cookies is possible, but it's replacing a dry ingredient with a wet ingredient. Doing so alters the batter and will not give you the same final cookie. Every other ingredient amount must be adjusted to compensate for the extra wet ingredients. Because honey is a wet ingredient, using honey instead of sugar means the cookie will be softer.

Can you put honey in cookies?
- Yes; using honey in cookies is somewhat easy if you replace only some of the sugar. You can replace all of the sugar with honey, but you'd have to adjust the entire recipe to get close to the cookie you want.

Does honey make cookies chewy?
- Yes; honey makes cookies chewy.

Substitutions for this Recipe

Dairy Free

You can make this recipe dairy free by replacing the melted butter with any non-fragrant oil - avocado, refined coconut, olive oil, etc.

Butter

Using unsalted butter in baking is always recommended, but if you do use salted butter, omit the salt added later.

Honey

The molasses in brown sugar is normally what gives chocolate chip cookies their chewy texture, but because we're doing diabetic friendly cookies, we needed a healthy recipe without brown sugar.

Honey was the perfect replacement because it's low glycemic and gives the same chewiness, making the final cookie soft, moist and chewy without the extra, empty carbs.

Nature Nate's is my preferred brand, but use whichever honey you like because your taste buds are accustomed to it.

Whether the honey is advertised as pure, raw, unfiltered, or anything else doesn't matter. The nutritional benefits of raw/unfiltered honey leave when heated.

Applesauce

Using unsweetened applesauce is important so you don't have extra sugar.

You can omit the applesauce if it's the one ingredient you don't have on hand, but the cookie is better with it because it balances the taste and gives that extra bit of sweetness.

Omitting the applesauce means the honey taste will be more noticeable, but the final taste and texture won't be significantly altered.

Leaving out the applesauce takes takes away only half of a carb per cookie.

Flour

A flour with gluten is necessary for this recipe because there's no egg. If you try to use a gluten free flour (chickpea, coconut, almond, etc.) and add an egg, you will not get the results you desire. Both eggs and gluten act as binders in baking, holding the final product together. So since this recipe is eggless, the gluten is necessary to hold the cookie together.

Baking is a science, and when one ingredient is changed, every other ingredient must be checked and/or changed.

I used all purpose flour, but using whole wheat flour is recommended because it's healthier and lower glycemic. It takes away only 1 carb per cookie, but because it's whole wheat your body will process more slowly.

Salt

Iodized salt is always recommended unless you're familiar enough with using other salts in baking.

Chocolate Chips

To keep this recipe sugar free, use sugar free chocolate chips from Hershey's or Lily's. Hershey's uses an artificial sweetener that tastes similar to sugar, and Lily's uses stevia. Both brands can be found at Walmart.

The darker the chocolate, the healthier it is. Chocolate chips that are 60% or greater cocoa are your best bet. BUT if you're not a fan of dark chocolate, or if you've never tried it, stick to the milk chocolate chips because the darker the chocolate, the more bitter it becomes.

Storage

Store in a closed container, plastic baggie, or wrapped in plastic wrap. Store in the refrigerator for longest life.

You can also wrap and freeze individually.

Side note - I left these cookies uncovered on the counter for 4 days as a test. They remained soft, moist and chewy! On the 4th day, some of the moisture had left, but the flavor and life held up well.

And you know the old school trick to make cookies moist again, right? Put them in a container with a slice of bread. The cookies will absorb the moisture from the bread.

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