Chocolate Chip Cookies

I eat healthy enough in my life that on the occasion when I am going to eat dessert, it better be worth it.  Butter, sugar, dark chocolate... no substitutions, nothing fake, no holding back.  So I have to admit that I almost didn't want to make these cookies.  I don't want to make or eat cookies that are only kinda good.  But, for the blog, I figured I'd try it out.

I heard that avocado can be substituted for butter, so I looked up a few recipes.  I ended up on The Hill Country Cook and basically followed her recipe.   (If you go to her page, be warned, she used green m&m's so that's what the chunks of green are in her cookies, not avocado! :))

So I had this great plan to have these cookies ready for my research team as a welcome home surprise after he had been gone for a few days, (two surprises:  surprise, cookies!  and surprise, hidden avocado!)  but when I opened the avocado, this is what I found:

It's weird because the skin was hard, so it didn't feel too soft.  I had three avocados, so I figured one of them would be good... but no, they all looked like that!  What the heck!?!?  I was super bummed, especially since I had already started mixing ingredients.  Ugh, and avocados are expensive!  :(  Well, I figured I'd just make a batch with no avocado, and then I would have a direct comparison when I did make them with avocado.

One week later... we had 3 new avocados.... but this time I checked the avocado before I mixed ingredients!

Phew!  Much better.  And so far, of the three new avocados, two have been beautiful.  (Plus BONUS! these were on sale!)

So now I can continue:

1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup avocado (1 small avocado)
3/4 cups white sugar
3/4 cups packed brown sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 1/4 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)
dark chocolate chips
Combine dry ingredients, set aside.  Cream together avocado, butter, and sugars.  Here is what it looked like:

It's hard to tell in the picture, but it is just a little green.  But more worrisome was that I could taste the avocado... hmmm.  Add eggs and vanilla, one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

Then add dry mixture one cup at a time.  Add nuts and chocolate chips.  After adding the flour, we could STILL taste the avocado.   I felt more and more nervous that this whole batch was going to be a waste.

The recipe said to roll spoonfuls of dough into balls and flatten slightly.  Well, my dough was pretty sticky, so I sorta spooned the dough onto the baking sheets and tried to flatten it a little.  (Which after a batch of those, I pulled the flour back out and rolled them into balls and flattened them, to see how that turned out...)   Bake at 350 degrees for 11 minutes.  

Here's how they came out before I was rolling and flattening them, and then also a picture after I rolled and flattened them:

I actually like the non-rolled ones better, but I am weird like that.  More importantly they were not green at all, no sign of the avocado.  Also, and this was shocking to me... no sign of the avocado in the taste either!  None.  I was shocked.

So beautiful.  So in terms of comparing the cookies to the batch with no avocado (and 1 cup of butter, that is the only difference in the recipe)... this is how those came out:

They, of course, taste great, but are obviously much flatter.  It's funny because I like my cookies fluffier and WOW does the avocado solve the flat cookie problem!

I feel like I am still in shock about how well they turned out.  No joke, I think I am always going to make my cookies like this from now on!

The Verdict:

"Also great for breakfast!"

(Hee hee, he is not joking, we really did each have a cookie before breakfast...)