Trail Mix Chocolate Chip Cookies
Trail Mix Chocolate Chip Cookies may seem like just one more variation on the myriad already in existence, but I think it’s more than that. These are protein-packing cookies, with just enough sweet, and just enough goodness to keep you coming back for more!
Did you know the word cookie is something mostly used in North America? The rest of the English-speaking world call these bite-size baked treats biscuits. In South Africa the word cookie is used to describe what we would call a cupcake. In Scotland a cookie is considered a bun. Thanks, Wikipedia for your cookie knowledge!
Cookies, like so many other tasty dishes, arrived in the United states via immigrants, mostly of the Dutch and Scottish variety.
Communication in early America wasn’t as instantaneous as it is today. That’s probably why the popularity of cookies took it’s sweet time in spreading.
Or maybe there was a naming problem. A lack of branding. Today we mostly know them as cookies. But back then there were some downright peculiar names for cookies.
They called them Snickerdoodles and Cry Babies. That’s my favorite. Do you think they were called this because it best described how people acted when they didn’t get one?
But that’s not all. They were also called Jumbles and Plunkets.
Graham Jakes.
Jolly Boys.
Branbles.
Tangle Breeches.
Kinkawoodles.
Today they’re just cookies. At least to those of us in North America. I think I might start calling them Kinkawoodles. It sounds like something my mom would have come up with. Regardless of the moniker, a cookie by any other name would still taste as sweet.
Trail Mix Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ingredients
- ½ cup peanut butter
- ½ cup Earth Balance Margarine
- 1 ½ cups brown sugar, packed
- 2 teaspoons vanilla
- 1 tablespoon flax seeds, ground
- 1 tablespoon corn starch
- 3 tablespoons soy milk or water, cold
- 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
- 1 ½ cups flour*
- 1 cup oatmeal
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 tablespoon chia seeds
- 1 tablespoon hemp seeds**
- 1 tablespoon pumpkin seeds, roughly chopped
- 1 cup chocolate chips, dairy-free
* Make these cookies gluten-free by using 1 cup brown rice flour and 1/2 cup buckwheat flour
** Hemp Seeds can be purchased at most health food stores. I bought a bag at the health food section of my local grocery store. Check out the nutritional benefits of Hemp Seed.
Directions
- Heat your oven to 350F.
- In a large bowl combine the peanut butter, margarine, sugar, and vanilla. You can use a blender here if you’d like, or burn a few calories by putting your arm into a bit and work it up a bit.
- In a separate small bowl combine the ground flax seed, corn starch, and soy milk (or water). The corn starch will want to get kind of clumpy. Stir it up a bit to keep that from happening. Then add the vinegar, let it sit for just a second or two and pour it into the peanut butter mixture. Stir well.
- You could use a separate bowl to mix the dry ingredients, but I just move the peanut butter mixture to the side and mix the dry ingredients together there. Add the flour, oatmeal, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Stir until combined. Next add the chia, hemp, and chopped pumpkin seeds and give the dry ingredients another little stir.
- Now stir together the dry and the wet ingredients. If the mixture seems a little bit too dry, feel free to add another tablespoon of soy milk (or water). Then add the chocolate chips and stir everything one last time.
- I rolled the dough into large 1 – 1 1/2 inch balls and placed them and inch or so apart on a baking pan. Bake anywhere from 9 – 12 minutes depending on your desired crunchiness. I baked the first batch for 10 minutes and was a bit worried they were too soft. But after they cooled they were the perfect cookies – crisp on the outside, chewy on the inside.
They come out of the oven on the puffy side, but just wait a minute or so and they’ll deflate and turn into a nice-looking cookie!
Thanks to What’s Cooking America for this brief history on cookies and their names. These cookies are best enjoyed with a glass of soy milk and a quiet afternoon of February sunshine. I hope you have both!
Shannon
I have been mixing so many things in my chocolate chip cookies lately. It makes them even better, if that’s even possible.
Cassie
These look amazing, Marla. I love all of the little additions, like chai seeds…perfect!
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Would love to take a big container of these camping! They look fantastic..also LOVE your rundown on how the cookie got its name. Reminds me of Bill Bryson’s Made in America: An Informal History of the English language. Hilarious! At least to a language nerd like me.
Evan Thomas
Great sounding cookies! I love hemp seeds. They remind me of a vanilla almond.
Heidi @ Food Doodles
These look delicious no matter what you call them 😀 I love all the names, haha. I love all the different seeds in your cookies, and they look great!
Grace
mmm….yummy! I love all the cool names especially “kinkawoodles”. Your pics are amazing Marly again you have me drooling, why do you live so far away! I can’t stop in for coffee and kinkawoodles.
Jessie
I just made these and they were amazing! Although, I cannot officially call them trailmix cookies because I didn’t have any of the seeds on hand so I really just made chocolate chip cookies. I also didn’t have enough brown sugar so I made up for it with agave (which I considered using anyways because the peanut butter was so chunky) and I used arrowroot instead of cornstarch and they turned out sooooo good! Next time I’m at the store I will surely grab the seeds and make these again and again. This is now my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe! Especially since I almost always have all of these ingredients on hand (except the seeds of course). Oh yeah, I used almond milk because I never have soy.
Thanks for the recipe!
Nina
Hello, lovely looking biscuits. I’m pretty keen to make anything and everything more healthy, especially for my children.
I wish I could get hemp seeds here in Oz but clearly our government hasn’t quite grasped the abundance of good hemp seeds can do for the body. Never fear, I’ll use chopped sunflower seeds instead. 🙂
I am interested to know how many biscuits you made from this mix?
Cheers, Nina
p.s. What you call biscuits (fairly flat, dense, bread like. You put jam on them), we (Australia, the UK, possibly elsewhere) call scones. Aaah, language. Don’t you love it? 😉
Healthy Meals for Less
These look great. I’ll definitely have to try these. I’m a sucker for cookies 🙂