Pecan, Oat and Dark Chocolate Chunk Cookies

In Martha Stewart Living's May issue, there are some recipes for non-sweet "healthy" desserts, including these pecan, oat, and chocolate chunk cookies that I made over the weekend. There is no sugar, no flour, no butter and no eggs in these cookies; instead, the recipe calls for pecan flour (made by pulsing pecans in the food processor), maple syrup and olive oil. For flavoring, I used almond extract instead of vanilla. The batter of these cookies worried me - it seemed way too crumby to form a cookie at all. I think I may have needed to pulse the pecans finer than I did. I ended up pulsing about 1/2 cup of oats to make oat flour, and adding that to the batter in hopes of making it all stick together better. I couldn't really tell if it helped though.

Amazingly, the cookies did "stick" together during the cooking process, but they were very, very crumbly out of the oven. They pretty much fall apart when I pick one up. If I had the foresight to save all of the cookie crumbs, they would make an amazing topping for ice cream or yogurt. But I didn't do that :)

The flavor is just about everything I love in a snack: the perfect combination of being barely sweet, slightly salty, and pleasantly nutty. I think the almond extract enhanced the nuttiness to the perfect degree. Snacking on these cookies feels virtuous, not indulgent, but since they are so delicate I have to pack them in a tupperware to bring them to work

dark photo, but a delicious crumbly cookie