These vegan chocolate chunk date cookies inhabit the space precisely midway between crunchy and chewy. If you leave them in the oven a minute or two longer, they will be on the crunchy side; if you take them out a little sooner, they will be chewier. Of course, it depends on your oven, and ovens can be as individual and unfathomable as cats. For mine, eleven minutes seems to be the optimum baking time.
Either way, these are satisfying, rich chocolate biscuits, and they are very easy to make.
A fair bit of the sweetness is from dates – one of those rare foods that are both very sweet and very good for you. As well as being a good source of fibre, they contain numerous minerals including potassium.
The ingredients also include dark chocolate and cocoa powder, both of which feature in the top ten foods for polyphenol content.
So, in spite of the fact that these are a fairly classic example of chocolate chunk cookies, they nonetheless contain some really healthy ingredients.
The recipe will make twenty-four thick cookies approximately 6 cm in diameter. Adjust the baking time a bit for a dozen giant bakery-style cookies.
chocolate chunk date cookies…
ingredients
- 100 g coconut oil
- 200 g self-raising flour
- 1 level tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 30 g cocoa powder
- 1 tsp instant coffee powder
- 80 g light muscovado sugar
- 80 ml golden syrup
- 100 g dark chocolate, chopped
- 100 g ready-to-eat dates, chopped
method
- Set the oven to 180°C/360°F and line a large cookie sheet or two smaller sheets with baking parchment or greaseproof paper.
- In a large bowl, soften the coconut oil to warm room temperature, so that it is easily spoonable but not yet turning to liquid.
- Sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda, cocoa and instant coffee powder into the bowl and blend with a fork or pastry blender until it is well combined and sandy. (If you only have coffee granules, crush these with the back of a spoon to make powder.)
- Add the sugar and continue blending until well combined.
- Add the syrup and, using a fork, mix and press until the syrup is fairly well distributed throughout. This will take a few minutes.
- Lastly, add in the chopped dates and chocolate and mix using the fork until these are evenly distributed.
- Use your hands to bring the mixture together and knead a little to form a firm dough.
- Form balls around 1 to 1.5 inches across and place these on the baking sheet, leaving enough room for them to expand to at least six centimetres in diameter.
- Flatten each ball a little with the back of a spoon and bake for ten to twelve minutes.
- Allow the cookies to cool on the tray before transferring to a cooling rack.
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