PALEO CHOCOLATE CHAGA COOKIES RECIPE

Gluten-free, Grain-free + Egg-free

While chaga definitely doesn’t have a flavour profile that makes you think, “this tastes like a mushroom” when you try it straight as a tea, it does have a nice, subtle, earthy flavour. It also has some vanilla undertones that I think work really well combined with other flavours. I use chaga in a few different ways, especially in the fall and winter seasons to help boost my immune system (you can read more about chaga in this post). Some ways I consume chaga are as a tea to sip on, or I’ll use a decoction (tea) of it as a base instead of water in an elixir recipe blended with a few other ingredients to make a super-powered brew (such as this one) or as the base of a smoothie. Sometimes I’ll add chunks of chaga to whatever stock or bone broth I happen to have simmering away, straining the chunks of chaga out along with whatever other vegetable or bones I was using to make the broth. I can then use that broth as the base for soups or stews, or add it to all sorts of different recipes that require added liquid.

One of my favourite flavour profiles to combine chaga with is chocolate, especially in the form of a hot cacao drink or as I have it here in my latest obsession - these chocolate chaga cookies. It’s easy enough to add chaga to various savoury foods and drinks, but I wanted a way to eat it in a different form - and a cookie of course makes for a pretty delicious form. Both chocolate and chaga contain lots of powerful antioxidants, so these cookies can actually boost your immune system!

This cookie is chocolate upon chocolate with the combination of a dark chocolate cookie dough PLUS chocolate chips. I added a touch of cinnamon to it for a bit of interest and warming spice, and of course lots of powdered chaga. I’m loving the SURO chaga for mixing in recipes like this as the powder is ground super fine and blends really nicely. And as an added bonus, I added another great superfood - gelatin - as a substitute for eggs. Yes, this is a paleo cookie recipe that’s actually egg-free! I haven’t tried making a vegan version of these cookies yet, but I imagine you could replace the gelatin with one or two flax or chia eggs and the cookies would hold together nicely.

INGREDIENTS

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). Grease two cookie / baking sheets with coconut oil. You could line the cookie sheets with parchment paper, however the cookies will spread more on the paper than they do when baked directly on the baking sheet.
2. In a large mixing bowl, mix together the almond flour, coconut flour, arrowroot (or tapioca) flour, cocoa powder, gelatin, chaga, cinnamon, baking soda and salt.
3. In a separate bowl, mix the melted and cooled coconut oil, vanilla extract and maple syrup together.
4. Add the wet mixture to the dry mixture, stirring until everything is well incorporated.
5. Stir in the chocolate chips.
6. Drop the cookie batter onto the baking sheets in large tablespoon sizes. Pat them down a little bit to make them uniform in shape and size - they won’t spread very much on the greased baking sheet.
7. Bake for 12-14 minutes, and once done pull them out of the oven and set them aside to cool on the baking sheets for a bit. They’ll be a bit crumbly if you try to remove them from the baking sheets too soon. Once they’ve cooled enough so you can touch them, slide them off of the baking sheets and place them on a cooling rack to finish cooling down.