Not Your Average Cookie

According to the American Academy of Allergy Asthma & Immunology, between 40 and 50 million Americans are affected by allergic diseases.

 

I’m the girlfriend of an American who suffers from severe food allergies. My boyfriend is both strong and smart, but in terms of food allergies, he has it rough. His consumption of any amount of beef, shellfish, or nuts causes anaphylactic shock.

 

To top it all off, he also has a severe egg allergy. As you may imagine, nearly every meal we share turns me into an irritating, overly obsessive, nervous Nellie.

 

Unfortunately, both egg and nut allergies really put a damper on that giddy excitement many of us feel about dessert. Most desserts, whipped with butter, flour and other unknown fixings, are the front-line for ingredient cross-contamination.

 

It is often the unsuspecting foods and ingredients that end up carrying harmful allergens. For example, even though you can’t see nuts mixed in that bag of chocolate chips, there’s a good chance that the chocolate was processed on contaminated machinery. With that in mind, I am thankful for detailed nutrition facts and thoroughly examine the nutrition labels on each and every box or bag of food that makes its way into my house.

 

Like the average girlfriend with an uncontrollable sweet tooth, I want my boyfriend to enjoy scrumptious treats over the holidays and I definitely want him to dig into a piece of cake on his birthday! So, over the past two years, I’ve been on a quest to bake him the most delicious dessert possible without eggs or nuts. Some of my allergen free cakes, cookies and brownies turned out well. However, others ended up sunken, sloppy messes that stuck to the pan in my sink.

 

On a brighter note, I recently found a promising recipe on the Art of Dessert blog, called “My Ultimate Egg-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies,” and decided to give it a try. Since the recipe is already egg-free, I thought I would add in another challenge and substitute the sugar with xylitol. After researching natural sugar substitutes, I chose xylitol because of its touted health benefits and resilience in high temperatures.

Modification:

Mid stir, I realized that baking with xylitol required an adjustment to the recipe. Xylitol soaks up moist ingredients like a sponge, so I added a ¼ cup of vegetable oil to my mixing bowl and voilà, problem solved.

Rianne’s Ultimate Recipe with Modifications:

- 2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
- 1 cup butter or margarine, at room temperature
- 1 ½ cups of xylitol

- ¼ cup of vegetable oil
- 8 oz. cream cheese, at room temperature
- 2 teaspoons vanilla
- 2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon salt

1. Preheat oven to 375ºF. Sift together flour, baking soda and salt; set aside.

2. In large mixer bowl, cream together butter, sugar, brown sugar, cream cheese, oil and vanilla.

3. Gradually blend dry mixture into butter/sugar mixture.

4. Stir in chocolate chips.

5. Drop heaping tablespoons onto ungreased cookie sheets about 2 inches apart.

6. Bake at 375ºF for 9 to 11 minutes, or until golden brown.

 

The End Product:

 

The best part of this recipe is the cream cheese! It adds a silky, creaminess to the dough and makes the cookies chewy and soft! Yum!

 

I recommend using an electric mixer. Smoothing the sticky, cream cheese batter by hand depleted my arm strength and it will take another week to recover from my mixing efforts.

 

In the end, most people loved my Ultimate Chocolate Chip treats and thought they tasted like cakey, biscuit cookies.

 

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you’re apt to overlook important details, make sure you read the part about NOT greasing the pan. I accidentally sprayed my baking sheets and this made the cookies a little slick and saucy out of the oven. Oops!

 

Thank you, Rianne, for a unique and easy-to-use recipe!

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