Caveman Cuisine: Paleo "Cookie Dough"

As kid, making home-made chocolate chip cookies with mom was always a treat.

During the process it was inevitable that flour would puff and billow out, scenting the air with the dry aroma of wheat. Eggs would be cracked and their gloppy contents, along with velvety softened butter, potent vanilla extract, and grainy sugar crystals, would go into the mix. Chocolate chips would be also be added, although a few always met a premature end, and the disparate substances, initially resistant to the idea of combining, would ultimately yield to "elbow grease", or the tines of an electric mixer.

From their union, cookie dough would be born, and while the alchemical magic of turning liquid dough into solid cookies was intriguing, the real excitement was always reserved for the "cleanup". I'd be handed the mixing bowl and spoon and would quickly go to work on the sweet, raw, gooey goodness. Since eschewing wheat, however, I've given up making cookies, which severely hinders the possibility of enjoying a spoonful of childhood memories now and again.

So I did something about it. It's not perfect, and it is definitely not cookie dough, but it is close, and it hits some of the same buttons without copious amounts of raw egg, sugar, and wheat flour.

Ingredients:

1 tbsp cacao nibs (see "Cacao Cacao" for the backstory on these)
1 tbsp chopped walnuts
2 tbsp almond butter
1 tbsp coconut oil
1-2 drops real vanilla
Pinch sea salt
Pinch cinnamon

Directions:

In a small bowl, combine "wet" ingredients (coconut oil, almond butter, and vanilla).  Add "dry" ingredients next (nibs, walnuts, sea salt and cinnamon) and mix well.

Eat with a spoon (or off of a mixer attachment if feeling particularly nostalgic.)