These chocolate hazelnut cookies were a request from my sister and are inspired by the amazing Little Bird Unbakery. All their food is raw and organic, and their cakes are made without dairy, gluten, sugar or soy, so they are THE ultimate guilt free treat.
In particular, they make a raw organic chocolate hazelnut cookie that is essentially like a decadent breakfast cookie. It’s quite a soft cookie filled with oats and hazelnuts and just a little sweetness, so you feel super healthy eating them even when you come across a chunk of dark chocolate.
My interpretation of this chocolate hazelnut cookie is lightly baked because I don’t own a dehydrator (yet!), however, they contain no dairy, gluten or refined sugar, and are full of whole food goodness in the form of hazelnuts, oats, coconut and apple. The recipe below makes approximately 12 large, soft, moist cookies. Enjoy!
Chocolate Hazelnut Cookies
100g rolled oats
50g thread coconut
50g desiccated coconut
70g hazelnuts
20g coconut sugar
pinch of himalayan pink salt
100g dark chocolate (I used 72% cacao with no milk products)
250g apple purée (see note below)
1 Tbsp maple syrup
50g coconut oil
Preheat oven to 160°C fan bake, and line two oven trays with baking paper or silicone mats.
Finely chop the hazelnuts (or blend in a food processor) until they resemble coarse breadcrumbs and place in a bowl along with the oats, dried coconuts, coconut sugar and salt. Roughly chop the dark chocolate into bite size chunks, add to the dry ingredients and stir to combine.
Gently melt the coconut oil over low heat and add to the mixture along with the apple purée and maple syrup, and stir well. The mixture should come together and be slightly sticky. Place tablespoons of the mixture onto the prepared trays and press lightly into shape.
Bake in preheated oven for approximately 25 minutes or until the cookies are lightly golden. Cool on a rack and then store the chocolate hazelnut cookies in a sealed container for up to 5 days.
Apple purée note:
Either make your own by placing peeled, chopped apples into a pan with a little water and bring to the boil. Simmer until soft and then blend. Or use a good canned apple purée with no sugar or additives e.g. Delish brand.
This is amazing
Came to your workshop last night and today finally bought a dehydrator
Harvey Norman have a sale on $199
No the best but square and 6 shelves so giving it a go.
Wanted littl bird receipt but not in their cookbook so thrilled to give this
a go. Thanks so much
Hi Vinka, so lovely to meet you last night! That’s so great you bought a dehydrator – we knew you would 😉 And thanks for the tip – I’lll have to check them out.
Hope you like these cookies – they are not exactly the same as little bird’s as they contain apple puree which was my way of keeping them moist after light baking. If you wanted to leave that out, I think you could increase the maple and coconut oil and you would get something pretty close 🙂
Hey Jose! These cookies look amazing- what do you think they put in the Little Bird ones? I think I prefer the use of apple puree.
Thanks so much
Hey Louise! Well if the recipe on their app is the one they use for their inshore cookies, looks like I wasn’t too far off….they use coconut sugar and dates to sweeten and obviously dehydrate them properly 🙂 Let me know if you give this version a go!
Hi there,
Thanks SO much for this recipe! Just love these cookies so being able to make them is amazing! Might didn’t seem to stick together too well so just wondering if I should up the coco oil/sweetener mix?
Hi Kate, the main binder in this recipe is the apple puree so it will probably be a consistency issue with that. I would try a bit more apple puree or a little more coconut sugar. Hope that helps 🙂
As an aside, if you want the actual recipe for Little Birds cookies it’s on their app and doesn’t use apple puree 😉
Hi Jose, I don’t have apple puree or apples at home, but would like to make some cookies. What could I use instead? Thanks, and I’ll definitely try this one another day. I’d like the use of apple puree.
Hi Christiane, the apple puree’s purpose in this recipe is as a binder and a mild sweetener, so the best substitute would be another high pectin fruit puree such as apricot or peach puree. Failing that, you could try prune or date puree – although you will end up with a much sweeter/darker cookie! You could also try substituting thick yoghurt like coconut yoghurt, or if you’re not plant based you could even try eggs. I haven’t tried any of these substitutes though, so I can’t vouch for how they’ll turn out. If you do try a substitution do let me know how it turns out! Good luck 🙂