Recipe Avocado Chocolate Chip Cookie Scones

SatNavSaysStraightOn · 11 Nov 2016

I was looking for something to do with a rather rip avocado that my OH had proudly presented me the day before. It was a 'look what I have found you' trophy that I had to accept, look pleased about and inwardly think about the 2 that had been sitting in the sun for the last 5 days ripening to the point of perfection...

And so began the thought process along the lines of I wanted a recipe for chocolate chip cookies today didn't I? Yep. I wanted moist, chewie ones. I'm not overly happy with the current recipe. It has potential but I don't like the expense of the ingredients, and well it is OK but I've made it twice now and not really been 100% about it. I have reached the conclusion that I don't want double choc chip cookies. They just don't work for me so it was a single choc chip cookie/biscuit that was needed.

And so I found a suitable recipe on the Australian Avocado (or was it the American Avocado) website strangely enough and went off to raid the pantry for the necessary supplies. And promptly fail. What on earth is white whole wheat flour? How can whole wheat flour be white? It never, ever has been on the UK side of the pond and it certainly isn't on the other side of the world, though it is less brown than I am accustomed to. OK, lets ignore that and settle on what we have. It then went on to say you can leave out the white whole wheat flour if you use this amount of all-purpose white flour. OK. I know all-purpose flour is self-raising flour. Good I have that, bad its only in the wholemeal variety. No problem, fibre isn't an issue and I prefer the healthier side of life. Next came the butter substitution. Can do that with the cooking marg in the fridge that I used all of yesterday when I was making the yoghurt pastry for our evening meal. OK... err perhaps not. What about the light brown sugar and the white sugar. Err, I don't think we have even bought any of either of those yet since arriving in Australia 6 months ago. This isn't going well is it?

So what do I have?

Eggs - yes but I'm not using 2 yolks and (what ) throwing the whites as it actually suggests you do!
baking soda - check. Purchased last weekend for the yoghurt pastry recipe
salt - check
a large avocado - nope, its medium, but if I only eat 1/2 of my remaining half for lunch, then I should have enough
vanilla extract - sort of. It turns out I have vanilla extract concentrate. Didn't know it existed but there we go. Luckily seeing a syrup rather than a liquid last time I needed it (and the first time) I did a double take and read the side of the bottle - halve the quantity needed.... phew
12 oz chocolate chips - no way. 100g of dark chocolate chopped into chunks. Nothing more. Stingy I know but dairy free cooking chocolate is not cheap and that is half an packet...

So I have failed on 3 fundamentals of cookies, flour (OK not quite a fail), marg/butter - total failure and sugar, another total failure unless you count the small quantity of jaggery or coconut sugar I have... but I do have maple syrup - no I don't. My OH saw a similar shape bottle and purchased maple flavoured syrup. Yep that's going to taste good! :yuck:

Time for some experimentation and recording...

Now we don't like things too sweet, so you may need more sugar/honey/sweetness in this recipe. We also don't like things too fatty... so there is not a lot of fat in it, which is why it is no longer a biscuit/cookie and a cross between a scone and a biscuit/cookie.

SatNavSaysStraightOn · 11 Nov 2016

And so to the experiment...

Ingredients
1 large avocado, mashed
4 tbsp oil
200-250g honey (or other liquid sweetener, more if you like them sweeter, we don't so I used 200g)
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups self-raising wholemeal flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp fine sea salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon (optional)
1 egg
100g dairy free dark chocolate chunks

Method

Preheat the oven to 200C and have a couple of baking sheets handy. I don't grease mine, they don't need it - yours may.
Put the mashed avocado, oil, vanilla extract and honey into a bowl - I used the same bowl to weigh out the honey. It saved honey and saved mess! And now whisk until thoroughly combined. You should have a green gooey sweet liquid!
Add half the flour, the baking soda and the salt, plus the ground cinnamon if using, and whisk into the sweetened avocado mix.
Next beat in the egg until thoroughly combined
Add in the remaining flour slowly until you have a sticky dough.
Now hand mix in the chocolate chunks.
You will have a green dough, honest! Don't worry. It changes colour when cooked and resembles a conventional cookie/scone colour.
You have 2 choices now. You can lightly flour a surface and roll the dough out, using a biscuit cutter to make conventional biscuits from the dough. If you make it thinner, you will get a crisper biscuit. Thicker and you will get a more moist scone like biscuit. Make it 2cm thick and you will have a scone of sorts on your hands! Your other option is to use a desert spoon to cut off pieces and roll them in your lightly floured hands to form small golf balls, flatten them and have some rougher looking cookies like I did. Mine were 7-10mm thick and about 25mm diameter or so... Mine made roughly 35-40 or so I think... <goes off to look a photos to see if she can work it out>
Put them in the oven for 20 minutes until golden brown. Do keep an eye on them after 15 mins, after all, all ovens vary and I know mine has issues at times!
Transfer to a cooling rack and allow to cook.
Try to freeze some of them - they are great directly out of the freezer...

SatNavSaysStraightOn · 11 Nov 2016

So some pictures. Well first of all, nothing I do can convey the greenness of the uncooked cookie/scone to you in a photo. Nothing whatsoever.. honest