Coconut and Berries

Healthy, Vegan Recipes by Emma Potts

Raw Chocolate-Maca Sandwich Cookies

Happy Monday everyone! Hope your week’s got off to a good start. However it’s begun, these decadent little cookies are sure to make it better!

Raw Chocolate-Maca Sandwich Cookies | coconutandberries.com
If you follow me on my various social media pages, you might well have seen the new toy I recently welcomed into my kitchen. A dehydrator!

There was a great deal on the Tribest Sedona and I snapped it up. The first thing I made was these easy blackberry fruit roll-ups. These are just blackberries and a few dates blended together in my super duper blender then spread thinly and dehydrated for approx 16 hours. I was so pleased with how they turned out and spurred on by my first success I delved right into raw cookie-making!

BUT, before those of you who don’t have a dehydrator click away, I made sure these cookies can also be made without a dehydrator (and will only be sharing recipes on Coconut and Berries that can be)!

Raw Blackberry Fruit Roll-Ups | coconutandberries.com

These chocolat-ey little cookies are pretty yummy all by themselves but I decided to take them up a notch and sandwich them together with a fudgy chocolate layer.

Maca powder is the special ingredient in this recipe and adds a really unique flavour, along with some health benefits!

Like many superfoods, maca hails from South America and it’s been around for a long time, even being used by the Incas to enhance strength and stamina before they headed into battle.  It’s also very rich in vitamins and minerals and is also supposed to be good for balancing hormones, anxiety and depression.

Raw Chocolate-Maca Sandwich Cookies | coconutandberries.com

As I say, the taste is quite unique but is often described as “malty” and “mildly nutty”. I usually use it in smoothies and especially love it with coconut, banana and obviously chocolate! 

Raw Chocolate-Maca Sandwich Cookies | coconutandberries.com

As with most raw desserts, these are pretty easy to make (especially if you’re making them without a dehydrator) and made with whole, healthful ingredients you can feel good about putting in your body!

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Raw Chocolate-Maca Sandwich Cookies

Yield: 10 Sandwich Cookies

Ingredients

    For the Cookies:
  • 3/4 C Almond flour
  • 1/4 C Whole flax seed, ground
  • 1/3 C Raw cacao powder
  • 3 Tbsp Raw maca powder
  • 3 Tbsp Coconut flour
  • 3 Tbsp Agave nectar
  • 1 tsp Vanilla extract
  • 1/8 tsp Salt
  • 1/2 C (+ 1-2 Tbsp) Water
    • For the Chocolate-Maca Fudge Layer:
  • 1/4 C Almond butter
  • 1-1/2 Tbsp Raw maca powder
  • 2 Tbsp Raw cacao powder
  • 3 Tbsp Coconut sugar
  • 1 tsp Vanilla extract
  • Pinch of salt
  • 3 Tbsp Non-dairy milk OR water

Instructions

    For the cookies:
  1. In a food processor, or large bowl, combine all the dry ingredients (almond flour, ground flax, cacao, maca, coconut flour and salt).
  2. Add the vanilla and agave and pulse to incorporate. Finally, add the water and process or stir well to combine. The flax and coconut flour are very absorbent and will soak up the liquid leaving your mixture very thick. If it looks a little dry, add 1-2 Tbsp more water. Remove to a bowl and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.
  3. Roll out cookie dough between 2 sheets of parchment paper/Teflex dehydrator sheets to 1/4" thickness. Using a small cookie cutter or glass, cut out circles from the dough. Gather scraps and repeat process until all the dough is used up.
  4. For dehydrator-free version, lay the parchment paper on a baking tray and place the whole thing in the freezer to firm up.
  5. If using a dehydrator, dehydrate at 115 F for 16 +/- hours, until they are firm but not hard.
    6. For the Chocolate-Maca Fudge Layer:
  6. Blend all ingredients until very smooth. You may need to add a little extra liquid, depending on your blender. I use a Tribest personal blender for small amounts like this.
  7. Refrigerate until cookies are ready.
  8. Pipe or spread fudge onto one cookie, place a second cookie on top and press down lightly.
  9. For the freezer version, return to the freezer until firm. Just leave them to soften for a few minutes on the counter before eating.
  10. For the dehydrator version, store in an air-tight container in the fridge.
http://www.coconutandberries.com/2014/09/15/raw-chocolate-maca-sandwich-cookies/

A big thank you to Creative Nature for providing me with  ingredients for these Raw Chocolate-Maca Sandwich Cookies. You may be familiar with their line of superfood snack bars which have been on the market for some time now.

They’ve recently started selling superfood ingredients so you too can make your own power-packed treats at home! As well as maca, you can get acai, barleygrass, spirulina, baobab, spirulina, hemp protein and more. 

Raw Chocolate-Maca Sandwich Cookies | coconutandberries.com

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Comments

  1. These look delicious Emma.. And I love your blackberry roll-ups, I adore blackberries. We had a bumper crop this year and most of them are now in the freezer.

    • The roll-ups are so tasty! I wish I had more blackberries to use but I’m not expecting any “deliveries” from home and it’s not easy to find anywhere to forage in central London!

  2. Probably shouldn’t be staring at food in the middle of the night. Hey ho. Chocolate cookies. *Stares*

    I’m so glad you’re not planning on plastering dehydrator recipes across the blog! You’d be perfectly within your right to… but still:P Been meaning to try either maca or lucuma for a while now. I’m less interested in powders which are there purely for health benefits, but I’ve heard a lot of bloggers say good things about the actual flavours of both of those :)

    • No worries, I want everyone to be able to make my recipes!
      And I’m the same, as much as I appreciate the health benefits of these superfoods, I’m only going to use them if they taste good! Maca and lucuma are probably my favourites.

    • We don’t have fudge-os but I just googled them and my cookies do look pretty similar! Healthier of course 😉
      I guess you don’t have Malteasers in Canada? The malty chocolat-ey flavour of these reminds me of them. Yum.

  4. mm those look delicious and love the fudgy filling - and am interested at how much maca you added to the middle - I assume it added quite a lot of flavour - I have never had maca but when you say it is malty I am very tempted to seek it out

    • It is pretty malty yes. Have you had Malteasers? The flavour of these reminds me of them!
      As I said to another reader, as much as I like the health benefits of these superfoods, I’m only going to use them if I like the taste! I guess maca is a good vegan alternative to malted milk powder!

  5. Ahh I LOVE that you made your own fruit leather- it looks so perfect!! That’s kind of convincing me I NEED a dehydrator. And these plants look awesome!

    • I must admit, I’m having a lot of fun with it! I hear you can make fruit leather in an oven too, though it would probably involve leaving it on on a low heat for a long time which is pretty wasteful when it’s not designed to like a dehydrator is.

  8. These look so good Emma! You know I loooovee chocolate and I love cookies, so this is a winner! Love the healthy factor too. I haven’t tried maca yet. I’ve been a little scared to, since I’ve read it is easy to overdose on it and get TOO much energy?? Have you heard that? I love the sandwich cookies though…looks incredible!

    • I have heard of a few (very rare) cases of people reacting to maca but I don’t think it’s something to worry about! I do use quite a lot in the cookies to give them that malty flavour but if you’re only eating 1 or 2 cookies at a time, it doesn’t work out to that much per serving.
      I’m not going into battle like the Incas but they’re a good pre-workout snack!

    • Glad you’re a maca fan too! You could certainly use brown rice syrup here, though it’s not raw so the cookies wouldn’t “officially” be raw. Not a concern for me but might be for you. It’s also less sweet than agave so you might want to add a little extra, or top up the sweetness with a few drops of stevia (if you use it).
      Other options are maple syrup or coconut nectar.

  10. These cookies sound great, Emma. And your dehydrator sounds like fun. I am concerned about using maca because I cannot do either caffeine or ginseng - if I want to sleep any time within the next 24 hours. Then again, I would like to become more tolerant of caffeine, so perhaps just a single, plain cookie would help with that transition. Question: I do not like and do no use agave. It is necessary to the recipe to use a liquid sweetener, or could I use something like coconut sugar? Thanks.

    • Hi Susan,
      You do sound very sensitive to caffeine! I don’t drink coffee but am sure I probably get plenty of caffeine from green tea, matcha, cacao,etc.
      I do think it’s something you get used to.
      To answer your question, I imagine you could probably use coconut sugar, yes. You may just need to add a little extra water to compensate for the lack of liquid. You could also use coconut nectar if it’s something you use.

      • Thanks, Emma. I really appreciate your quick response. I’m not familiar with coconut nectar, but I’ll check it out. As for caffeine, I quit using it around 1980, but it left me extremely sensitive. I have recently learned that caffeine in limited quantities is good for you, so I’m starting to try to work back into using it. Verrrrry gradually…

  15. Hi Emma, your big fan here. As I wrote in my posts on fb I made it, both version dehydrator and freezer (a sort of cupcake with cocoa-frosting on the top) and… yesss it works, first time I managed to eat something containing maca powder and dind’t feel sick. Need to say over and over: another amazing recipe! To be honest, I made some variation, coconut nectar in the place of agave and… no maca in the filling, I was afraid It would have been too much maca por me, so just a simple super-vanilla almond butter-coconut nectar ready-to-use caramel! My husband really loved them, already eaten many of them :) Thank you so much to sharing, With love Valentina Jennifer

    • So pleased to hear the cookies were a success! And with your husband too. AND pleased to hear that you didn’t react to the maca! Your filling sounds perfect anyway (maybe even better than all chocolate-maca..!)/.
      Thank you again for sharing your beautiful picture with me! x

    • Maca is something you have to taste as it really is so hard to describe the flavour. I rarely use superfoods for their health benefits alone and maca is one I really like the taste of.

  17. I need these in my life! You are also making me want a dehydrator even more! I love maca, I remembered I first discovered it when I was offered it on a bus in south america 4 years ago, and I’ve been using it ever since.

    • That’s so cool to know that it’s actually still used over there! I’m much newer to it but really like it.
      And you should definitely ask for a dehydrator for Christmas (mine was a very early present 😉 )

  19. I bought a dehydrator not so long ago and I’m surprised how much use I get out of it, mainly for crackers and dried fruit and veggie chips. I definitely need to upgrade to some biscuit sandwich making action.

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