Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies with Grapefruit

A sour twist of an all-time favorite treat.

What to do when Mr. Henderson has gone for the week? Well, like they say, "when the cat's away, the mice will play."

And so, that's what I'm doing. For me, this means a juice cleanse. Wild and crazy, right?

I know for most of you that may sound awful and not fun at all, but I'm really enjoying it. I'm having juice for breakfast and for dinner and eating healthy, smaller meals in between. Breaking myself out my routine.

It's not that I'm trying to lose weight or anything like that, but sometimes it just feels good to give your body a little reboot. And when Matt isn't here, it's easy for me to just drink juice.

Grapefruit Juice in the morning.

I was inspired to buy a juicer when one of my favorite bloggers, Lisa from With Style & Grace, did a week of juice posts. They all sounded so delicious, that I just had to try it. In one of her posts, Lisa recommended a low cost juicer, the Waring JEX328 Health Juice Extractor, and I figured, "why not?" You never know unless you try!

So far it's great! I'm totally loving juicing. Much more than drinking my same old smoothies every morning. They're less filling, make me feel lighter throughout the day, and in general give me more energy. As we speak, I'm sipping on a beet, carrot, apple and cabbage juice. Purple and delicious.

In case you were curious, here are Lisa's five amazing juice recipes that got me hooked:

• Day 1: Fresh Strawberry, Apple & Lime Juice
• Day 2: Fresh Carrot, Apple & Ginger Juice
• Day 3: The Green Refresher
• Day 4: Fresh Grapefruit & Mint Juice
• Day 5: Apple + Cinnamon Juice

You must be wondering how cookies come into the picture of this healthy meal plan.

I've been doing some reading about juicing (and pinning a ton of recipes!) and I noticed that a lot of people were talking about the pulp. What do you do with all the extra pulp?

One of the most important things when juicing is to buy organic fruits and vegetables (as much as possible at least). I've been buying 100% organic for this mini-cleanse and that means more money spent at the grocery store.

When my juicer is done and ready to be cleaned, there is usually about a cup of pulp left over! It makes me cringe thinking about wasting all those healthy ingredients (and money). So I thought about experimenting a little bit.

How can you hide juice pulp? I was thinking crackers, but this juice was fruit so I wanted something sweet. Breads, muffins, and scones all crossed my mind, until finally I settled on cookies. Cookies you can really play around with. They're very forgiving.

Lately, I've been craving a good chocolate chip cookie (which I haven't made in ages - my very first post was a chocolate chip cookie recipe), and so I figured I would start with that. I know my basic cookie recipe (flour, eggs, sugar, butter), but I tweaked it slightly to be 100% vegan and gluten-free. My juice pulp (grapefruit juice) was my egg.

Just because I'm on a juice cleanse doesn't mean I can't eat cookies. One would think that I'd be focusing on eating completely healthy this week, but as you know, I'm a serious dessert person and I like my treats.

My goal with this week's cleanse is to drink my juice for breakfast and dinner and eat balanced snacks during the day. That doesn't mean no treats.

I've been munching on quinoa granola bites, homemade hummus and veggies, homemade pesto wraps and any other healthy snacks I can think of. But now I have cookies to add into the mix. A perfect little post lunch treat to satisfy my sweet tooth.

Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies with Grapefruit

Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies with Grapefruit

These cookies turned out to be absolutely amazing. I was worried about the texture before I popped them in the oven, but my goodness they are delicious. They're soft and chewy, not gooey, but slightly cakey and fluffy. Seriously, I think these are the best cookies I have made to date. That's a big accomplishment.


dry ingredients:

• 1/4 cup sorghum flour
• 1/4 cup brown rice flour
• 1/8 cup amaranth flour
• 1/4 cup tapioca starch
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon psyllium husk
• 1/4 teaspoon sea salt
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

wet ingredients:

• 1/2 cup melted coconut oil
• 1/4 cup grapefruit juice pulp from 1 juice (mine was Lisa's Grapefruit + Mint Juice)
• 1/2 cup vanilla coconut palm sugar (regular would work too)
• 2 tablespoons unsweetened coconut milk

additional ingredients:

• 1/2 cup gluten-free rolled oats
• 1/4 cup unsweetened shredded coconut 
• 1/3 cup raw carob chips

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.

Whisk all the dry ingredients together in a small bowl and set aside. 

In a medium mixing bowl, beat the coconut oil, sugar and grapefruit juice pulp together. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix to combine. Add the coconut milk and stir with a wooden spoon until it's mixed together. Fold in the rolled oats, shredded coconut and carob chips, until well combined.

Spoon the dough into little balls and place on the parchment lined baking sheet. 

Bake in the center of a warmed oven for 14 minutes or until slightly browned, but still soft.

Cool on a wire rack for 10 minutes and enjoy!

Makes 10 small cookies - this is a half batch.

Other gluten-free cookies you may enjoy:

• Gluten-free Chocolate Buckwheat Orange Cookies
• Gluten-free Pumpkin Cookies with Chai Icing
• Gluten-free Pumpkin Quinoa Cookies

This recipe is also featured on Recipe Lion's March Blog Hop which is all about Spring and the amazing recipes that are inspired by this time of year! Click on the button below to learn more about this great event and to enter the giveaway!