Healthy Hot Cocoa Cookies (Vegan, Gluten Free)

These healthy hot cocoa cookies are bursting with rich chocolate flavor and topped with toasted marshmallow. It’s the perfect healthy treat to cozy up with on a cold winter’s night!

If you live somewhere that has cold, snowy winters, you know that a hot cup of cocoa is the coziest treat. It warms you from the inside out, evokes childhood memories, and just makes you happy.

These healthy hot cocoa cookies will give you all the cozy feels! The rich chocolate base is packed with dark chocolate chunks. And it wouldn’t be hot cocoa without marshmallows! The toasted marshmallow on top truly makes these cookies special.

Made with healthy ingredients, these cookies have lots of nutrients that traditional hot cocoa cookies do not. Some of the healthy ingredients include oat flour, peanut butter, flax meal, and more.

Ingredients in healthy hot cocoa cookies

Here are the ingredients you need to make these cookies:

• Oat flour: Instead of all purpose flour, oat flour makes up the base of this cookie recipe.
• Cocoa powder: Make sure to get 100% cocoa powder that is unsweetened to get that rich chocolatey flavor.
• Brown sugar: You just need half a cup to add sweetness to this cookie recipe.
• Maple syrup: Adds more sweetness and moisture to the cookie dough.
• Flax meal: To make these cookies vegan, you’ll use ground flax meal to make flax eggs to use in place of regular eggs.
• Peanut butter: Instead of butter, peanut butter the fat source for these cookies. Use natural, runny peanut butter for best results – Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s brand both work great!
• Brewed coffee: This is optional, but just one tablespoon helps to bring out the chocolate flavors and makes these cookies taste even more rich.
• Vanilla extract: This enhances all the other flavors in the cookie recipe to give them a more complex flavor profile.
• Dark chocolate chunks: You can a bag of chocolate chunks or chop up your favorite dark chocolate bar.
• Marshmallows: These really make these cookies into something special! This brand is totally vegan.
• Baking powder
• Salt

Healthy ingredient swaps for hot cocoa cookies

These healthy hot cocoa cookies utilize several nutrient-dense ingredients, making them a healthier choice than traditional hot cocoa cookies. Here is some of the nutrition information about these ingredients:

• Swap oat flour for all-purpose flour. All purpose flour does not have many nutrients. The process of making all purpose flour removes the parts of the grain that contain healthy fiber, fats, and B vitamins. Oat flour retains these beneficial whole grain nutrients, because it is made using the entire oat grain. Oat flour has more fiber (including soluble fiber), vitamins, and minerals than all purpose flour.
• Use peanut butter instead of butter. Cookies require a fat source to add moisture, flavor, and richness. Instead of traditional butter, these cookies are made with peanut butter as the fat source! Peanut butter has less saturated fat than butter, and is high in heart healthy unsaturated fat. Replacing saturated fat with sources of unsaturated fat in your diet can have profound health benefits.
• Instead of regular eggs, use flax eggs. 1-2 eggs a day can be a part of a healthy, balanced diet, and they contain beneficial nutrients like choline and vitamin D. But to further reduce the saturated fat content of these cookies, we used flax eggs instead of regular eggs. A flax egg is simply ground flax meal whisked with water to form a gel like consistency. Flax eggs provide the same binding and structural properties to cookies as regular eggs do. Flax is a good source of fiber and omega-3 fatty acids.

How to make healthy hot cocoa cookies

• This recipe is super easy to make, and only takes about 20 minutes from start to finish!
• First, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or silicone baking mats. Whisk together all the wet ingredients in a mixing bowl: peanut butter, flax eggs, maple syrup, vanilla extract, and coffee.
• Then, mix together all the dry ingredients in a separate bowl: oat flour, cocoa powder, brown sugar, baking powder, and salt.
• Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix well to combine. The dough may be slightly crumbly and that is OK.
• Stir in the chocolate chips. Then, form golf ball sized balls of cookie dough. Place them on the baking sheet and press down to form patties.
• Bake for 9-11 minutes, then remove and top each cookie with half a marshmallow. Switch the oven to broil, and broil the cookies on the top oven rack for 30 seconds – 1 minute, or until the marshmallows turn golden brown.

More healthy cookie recipes to try

• Salted Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies
• Double Chocolate Tahini Cookies
• Almond Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
• Tahini Oatmeal Cookies with Coconut and Chocolate Chunks

Let me know if you love this recipe by leaving a comment or rating below, and check out Instagram and Pinterest for more healthy lifestyle inspiration. Thanks for stopping by!

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