Healthy(?) cookies!

Well, as some of you may heard, Brit loves to eat cookies. Unfortunately, though; her diet is a bit restrictive in the baked goods department. Fortunately, the current phase does allow for a certain amount of "slow carbs" which are things like whole wheat, quinoa, brown rice, yams, etc. So we decided to try whipping up some low cal/carb cookies.

For comparison sake I will list the recipe as written, and then list it as we altered it.

From the back of a bag of Ghirardelli chocolate chips:

2 1/4 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup butter
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
2 cups chocolate chips
1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

What we did:

2 cups whole grain oat flour (ground up oatmeal)
1/4 cup flax meal (ground up flax seeds) mmm... Omega-3s
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup + 2 tbsp olive oil (we ran out of butter and a website said this is equivalent to 1/2 cup butter)
1 cup stevia extract (no calories!)
1/2 cup sucanat (because we had it laying around so why no, I'm not convinced that it's healthier than normal sugar)
3 tsp vanilla extract (because I always use more than is called for)
2 eggs
3 tbsps cocoa powder
2 cups chocolate chips
1 cup sunflower seeds

-I'd like to interrupt here and say I just tried my first bite, fresh out of the oven, and OH MY GOD. So good. So, so good.-

Preheat oven to 375 deg
Mix flour, baking soda, and salt and set aside.
Blend butter and sugar until creamy, add vanilla and eggs (and cocoa).
Slowly add flour mixture, then chocolate chips and nuts.
Bake 10-12 minutes.
EAT.

Here's the thing though; recently our oven has gone to shit and takes 45 minutes to reach 375. Bullshit. This time it kinda worked out though because one thing I learned working in a restaurant is that refrigerating cookie dough before baking makes for much prettier, less puddle-y, cookies. So we had the time to spare. Also, I LOVE baking on parchment paper, then you don't have to clean the baking sheet s or destroy the cookies while transferring them to a cooling rack. And yeah, as I interjected above; these things are BOMB. They are lighter and less dense than normal cookies, most likely because of the stevia which is eerily light-weight; a 10oz bag has the same sweetness as 5lbs of sugar.
I'm not exactly sure how much healthier they are than normal cookies, but they are certainly lower calorie and higher in heart-healthy oils. I highly recommend them. And so does Brittany.

 

[UPDATE: after cooling and getting a little drier, these guys have gotten fairly crumbly, but still amazingly delicious.]