Pumpkin Pecan Chocolate Chip Cookies

Hello!  Thanks for visiting my blog.  Tonight I am SO EXCITED to share with you what I feel are the BEST CLEAN EATING cookies that I have made to date!  We have been eating clean for the past 13 months and this life change has gone a long way in improving my health, adding energy, lowering cholesterol, etc.  But, I am still a cookie person.  What can I say?  A good cookie is still my #1 weakness!  In the past year I have made some pretty interesting cookie/bar recipes.  I am going to just go ahead and say that tonight's recipe for Pumpkin Pecan Chocolate Chip cookies is the "most normal" clean eating cookie recipe that I have ever made here.  It also is not quite as "extreme" as some of my other recipes.  I DO like the others.  Such as the bars made with the garbanzo beans (see Clean Blondie Bars) or the banana oatmeal cookies which have ZERO sweetener or usual "fat" in the recipe (see Banana Oatmeal Cookies).  Tonight's recipe does include a healthy fat in the form of 1/2 cup of coconut oil which is not so bad amongst the 24 oversize cookies which this recipe yields.  The sweetener is a combination of raw honey and coconut palm sugar, which is a nice sugar for baking in that it is low-glycemic but still gives you the texture/consistency of sugar within a recipe.  I did some looking around on the web earlier this evening and wound up combining a few recipes and adding my own elements in order to craft the one that we experimented with tonight.  Honestly, I would not change a thing and will make this one exactly the same way next time!  Good thing that I was motivated to record my actions in order to blog the recipe!  Otherwise I tend to be a "make it up as you go" sort of cook/baker!  

We are not 100% organic here within our home but many of our items have shifted to organic.  See the top photo above for which brands we used in making this recipe.    

Pumpkin Pecan Chocolate Chip Cookies 

                                     * Makes 2 Dozen Large Cookies

1 cup canned pumpkin puree

1/2 cup coconut palm sugar

1/2 cup raw honey

1/2 cup coconut oil, melted

1 large egg, brought up towards room temperature

2 cups whole wheat pastry flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1-2 teaspoons ground cinnamon, depending on your taste.  I use 2!

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

3/4 cup dark chocolate chips

3/4 cup finely chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 350.

In a glass bowl (I use my Pampered Chef Large Batter Bowl), melt coconut oil and raw honey.  Whisk in pumpkin puree, coconut sugar and vanilla.  Mix until well blended.  Add egg and continue to whisk well.  (You want to add the egg AFTER you whisk the coconut oil well with the other ingredients to keep the coconut oil from becoming solid again….when coconut oil comes in contact with anything cold, it will solidify.  It also helps to pull your egg out of the fridge just before beginning to assemble everything needed to make your cookies.  A "not so cold" egg will result in cookies that are more fluffy).

In a separate bowl, whisk together together flour, baking powder, baking soda, ground cinnamon, and salt. 

Gently fold the flour mixture in to the pumpkin mixture and mix carefully until combined.

Stir in the chocolate chips and chopped pecans.

Using the Pampered Chef Medium Scoop (size is 2 tablespoons), drop cookies onto stoneware Large Bar Pan.  The surface of seasoned stoneware does not require any prep for baking these cookies.  Use a spoon or spatula to flatten the cookies a bit prior to baking.  The kids were using spoons but I discovered on the 3rd (and final!) pan that the Small Spatula actually does a great job of smoothing/shaping the cookies without the dough sticking to it like it did with the metal spoons.  The prepped cookie dough should be slightly flattened and smoothed prior to going into the oven.  You do not want to put these into the oven as a big rounded ball or they will not bake all the way through in a nice way.

Bake for approximately 10-11 minutes or until lightly brown and firm.  The batter does not spread very much.  The cookies will appear "fluffy" but are not dry or cake-like.  They are moist on the inside!  

Transfer to a wire cooling rack.  Enjoy!!