Diabetes-friendly "Almost" Sugar-Free Chocolate Chunk Cookies

UPDATE 12/18/2021

I am always tweaking these recipes. The one here now more closely resembles a classic chocolate chip cookie and makes use of Carbquik, which is an outstanding baking mix that behaves much like flour. I have also moved to using Erythritol and Monkfruit sweeteners as they are closer to normal sugar, and you can get Swerve (Erythritol) in a brown version that works just like brown sugar and still has a GI of zero. 

Back in September I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. It was, as it is for many people, a devastating discovery and it's been a hard road. I'm not quite there yet, but I'm learning to manage it. Of course, this means finding substitutions for a lot of carb-y treats I used to love (I'll be revisiting my lembas recipe to work on how to make that more Type 2 friendly soon as well).

One of my favorite things in the world is chocolate chip cookies. How could I live without them? Well, fortunately, I don't have to. Here's a recipe I've cooked up for diabetes-friendly chocolate chunk cookies that are almost sugar free. I say "almost" because there's a tablespoon of molasses in the recipe. But that's for the entire recipe. So with that disclaimer, here we go.

Ingredients:

• 2 sticks butter
• 3/4 cups brown Swerve
• 3/4 cups Monkfruit sweetener, erythritol, Splenda, or Stevia*
• 2 large eggs
• 1 tsp Vanilla extract
• 12 oz. (2 bags) Hershey's Sugar-Free Dark Chocolate Mini Bars
• 2 1/4 cups CarbQuik baking mix or almond flour
• 3/4 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt

* The original recipe called for 

• 1 1/2 cups Splenda (you can use Stevia if you like)
• 1 Tbsp Molasses
  

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees
2. (This is the fun part) Take a plumber's mallet or meat tenderizer to the two bags of dark chocolate bars. You don't want to powder them, but give 'em a good beating to turn them into chunks. I actually use a Slap-Chop, which works great!
3. Place the coconut oil in the microwave for 1 minute or until it liquefies
4. Combine coconut oil, Splenda, molasses, eggs and vanilla in a bowl, whisk until smooth.
5. Combine almond meal, baking soda and salt in another large mixing bowl. 
6. Stir wet ingredients, dry ingredients and chocolate chunks together until you've got a nice dough. 
7. Line baking sheet(s) with parchment paper.
8. Scoop heaping tablespoonfuls of cookie dough onto sheets, about 2 inches apart.*
9. Bake for 12-16 minutes. 
10. Let cool and enjoy!

* These will spread a lot, so don't feel like your drops are too small. If you are using almond flour, they won't spread as much, so shape the drops into bulging discs..

I'm not 100% sure about the exact carb count of these, but the entire recipe should have a net carb count of 57 grams - that's for the entire batch. I got 16 cookies out of this, so that's just over 3.5 g of net carbs per cookie (Note: the 3/18/21 revision should have less)! Also, there's 72.6 grams of protein in the whole batch (the 3/18/21 revision will have less protein if you use Carbquik), which breaks down to roughly 4.5 g of protein per cookie. There's also somewhere between 30 and 40g of dietary fiber in the batch (already accounted for in the net carbs).

I should mention, however, that the Hershey's sugar free bars contain a LOT of sugar alcohols, so if your diabetes is sensitive to those, this might not be the recipe for you. I'd suggest maybe adding some cocoa powder to the dough instead of chocolate chunks to create chocolate flavored cookies instead? You'd have to experiment to see how that would work.