Chocolate Chip Cookies (plus sunflower seed flour) {nut free/ gluten free/ vegan}

A lot of the gluten free and vegan baking recipes I've been coming across recently are from paleo/grain free people and look delicious, but are FULL of nuts, especially almond flour.  Unfortunately, with a tree nut allergy, I can't do participate in the wonderful world of almond flour. To make it even worse, there seems to be a serious lack of decent substitutions for almond flour.

Then things got serious. I found the Urban Poser's website the other day and I was DYING to try these cookies so I began a serious hunt for a substitute.  Thankfully, Paleo Parents had a suggestion. Sunflower seed flour!! It requires similar amounts of moisture as almond flour so they can be used interchangeably. Problem solved!!

First to make the sunflower seed flour. I used one pound of roasted and unsalted sunflower seeds from Trader Joe's. It makes about 3.5-4 cups of flour. Simply throw it in your food processor or specialty blender (like a ninja or vitamix) and pulse it up. There are some fancier ways to make seed/nut flours, it involves dehydrating and soaking and TIME. You can read about it here.

When it starts to clump, stop pulsing. 

My flour didn't turn out super fine as I would have liked, but the coarseness worked out fine. 

Now on to the cookies. You'll need

-2 cups of your new sunflower seed flour

-1/3 cup of melted coconut oil

-1/4 cup honey (or vegan substitute)
-1 tbsp vanilla extract

-1/4 tsp baking soda

-1/4 tsp salt
-1 tbsp coconut milk 

-1/4 cup chocolate chips (gluten free and vegan - I used trader joe's).

Here's how:

Combine your dry ingredients: salt, flour and baking soda. 

Then add your wet ingredients and combine. My flour was still a bit coarse so I threw it in the food processor again. This may have helped or may have been an unnecessary step, but it made me feel better about my coarse flour..

Stir in your chocolate chips. Scoop a flat 1 tbsp (the actual measuring spoon) of cookie dough on to a cookie sheet. This was very easy to do (it was suggested by the Urban Poser) and really made a nice sized cookie. Cook for 10-12 minutes at 350. Do not let them burn. The bottoms will burn way before the tops are overly brown. The tops will be set when they are finished. You will be able to tell by lightly touching the tops and seeing how much movement you get. 

Here is the beautiful finished project!