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Chocolate Chip Kale Cookies

4.80 from 5 votes

Would you try these chewy chocolate chip kale cookies? Defying all logic, the recipe is surprisingly great!

High in Vitamins A and C, these cookies might be the healthiest chocolate chip cookies ever, and you really can't taste the kale!
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Chocolate chip cookies with kale

Sometimes you do things for the shock value.

After all, how often is it that you come across a recipe idea that not a single other person on the internet has tried before??

So you make the cookies.

But then you are the one who is shocked… because they actually taste really good!

I made chocolate chip kale cookies solely because I wanted to see what would happen (and kind of because I thought it would be funny), NOT because I ever dreamed they’d turn out well.

I had extra kale on hand and figured, “Why not?”

Sometimes I get bored of just making the same old things time and time again, and nothing gives my creative mind more excitement than experimenting in the kitchen and eating the ridiculous results.

And yet, these kale cookies turned out so well that if you didn’t know the kale was in there – i.e. if you closed your eyes and tried one – you would have absolutely no idea!

Plus, the green makes them perfect for Christmas without the use of any artificial colors or sprinkles.

chocolate chip kale cookies

I’m not sure you’ll take my word for it.

You will probably roll your eyes at me and think, “Ugh. There goes another basic influencer taking the kale trend way too far…”

And normally, I would agree with you.

As I wrote in my post for Cauliflower Pizza Crust, I tend to rebel against anything that’s trendy, especially where food is concerned.

Kale is already delicious in its own right, sautéed with garlic and oil or tossed into a salad with ginger-sesame dressing and roasted vegetables.

So why go crazy and put it into ice cream, chocolate cake, soda (yes, kale soda is a thing), or chocolate chip cookies?

kale dessert
kale chocolate chip cookies
spinach cookie

Seriously, though, these cookies just taste really good, kale or not!

Sometimes, a recipe can really surprise you.

So try them if you dare!

I know it sounds crazy, but the shocking thing about these kale cookies is that they are actually good!
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Chocolate Chip Kale Cookies

These healthy and chewy chocolate chip kale cookies are surprisingly tasty!
Cook Time 11 minutes
Total Time 11 minutes
Yield 10 – 12 cookies
4.8 from 5 votes

Ingredients

  • 1 cup spelt, white, or oat flour, loosely packed (125g)
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1/2 cup sugar (or coconut sugar or xylitol)
  • 1/3 cup chocolate chips
  • 2 tbsp milk of choice
  • 2 tbsp oil or melted butter
  • 1/4 tsp pure vanilla extract
  • 1 cup raw kale or spinach (stems removed)

Instructions

  • Preheat oven to 325 F. Process kale or dice it extremely fine. Combine all dry ingredients except kale in a medium bowl, then stir in remaining ingredients to form a dough. It will be dry at first, so keep stirring until a cookie-dough texture is achieved. (Add 1 additional tbsp milk of choice only if needed – I didn't need it.) Roll into balls. Place on a cookie tray, and bake 11 minutes. They will look underdone. Remove from the oven anyway, and let them cool 10 minutes, during which time they will firm up. You can also make extra cookie dough balls and freeze them to bake at a later date.
    View Nutrition Facts

Notes

Prefer regular chocolate chip cookies? Try these Healthy Chocolate Chip Cookies or my Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies.
 

Have you made this recipe?

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More About The Cookbook

Published on December 8, 2016

Meet Katie

Chocolate Covered Katie is one of the top 25 food websites in America, and Katie has been 
featured on The 
Today Show, CNN, 
Fox, The 
Huffington Post, and 
ABC's 5 O’Clock News. Her favorite food is chocolate, and she believes in eating dessert every single day.

Learn more about Katie

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49 Comments

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  1. Amy says

    Looks interesting, and I have a friend who would probably love them. One question, though – you specify not to add the kale when mixing the dry ingredients, but then you don’t mention the kale when you talk about adding in the wet ingredients. I assume the kale gets mixed in the with the wet ingredients. Can you confirm that?

  2. Cassie Tran says

    This is such a splendid idea on how to use everyone’s beloved or not-so-beloved green! I feel as if you either love kale of you hate it. Anyways, you might want to try making COMPLETELY green cookies someday! It would be a SUPERB unusual recipe! “I do not like green cookies Sam I am!”

  3. Chana says

    I usually love your blog. But this has taken things too far. I love kale. I eat it daily. But kale in a cookie!? Just enjoy the treat for what it is and stop trying to make it ‘ Healthy” .cookies are not healthy. They are not supposed to be! Calling a cookie healthy only encourages overeating.
    Bad plan.

    • Angela says

      @Chana: This recipe is not a “bad plan”. The idea that we “treat” ourselves with unhealthy things at all is a bad plan and encourages us to look at a bad thing as a good thing. Thank you, Katie, for sharing your kale cookie recipe. I love it and so do my kids!

  4. Genevieve says

    Do you think this would work with frozen kale? I have lots of bags of frozen kale, spinach and parsley for smoothies. Though the parsley could be weird…hmmm….

    • Angela says

      @Genevieve: I used 1 cup frozen kale. Heat it up slightly on the stovetop and hand squeeze it to release as much water as you can. You want it to be as dry as possible before adding to the recipe. 🙂

  5. Lauren Simmonds says

    I’m so excited to try these! How long do they keep on the counter for? (As in, if I make them Thursday will they last until family Christmas tree decorating on Sunday?) (if I don’t eat them all first! Haha!)

  6. Jayme says

    Thank you for posting! I made these with my daughter today and both of my kids loved them! They had no clue there was kale in there. These are great and I will definitely make these again.

  7. Lauren says

    Whenever I make cannabis cookies (it’s legal where I am), I also make a batch of regular cookies to have something to munch on. I love this idea and will be using it to differentiate between the two batches (obviously the weed ones should be green 🙂

  8. Lauren says

    My name is Lauren Witsiepe and I have to tell you Katie, I truly look more forward to your emails than any other email that gets sent to me. You have a gift sister. If you have nasty comments coming to you, ignore them entirely. You make your pictures look so beautiful, your recipes are so creative and healthy, actually healthy not sort of healthy. And you’re website is simple, not cluttered like some blogs.

    Thank you for sending your sweetness to our emails. Its who you are and you need to remember that sister!

  9. Kimberly says

    I like how the cookies have flecks of green for Christmas… now what could be added to get a non-artificial fleck of red in there too? That would be perfect!

  10. Mrs. A says

    I was very excited about this recipe until I actually made the cookies. I put my Kale and spinach into the food processor until I got 2 cups, (I think the recipe needs to specify that you need to measure the kale prior to putting it into the food processor). This made the the batter way too runny. When I took my cookies out of the oven they were oozing kale juice. The cookies did harden up. The response I got from my children after a few bites was “Mommy these cookies make me want to puke.” My husband ” They aren’t bad but don’t make them again.” Most of my co-workers agreed they were not the worst cookies they have ever had but really a bite is all they could stand to take. Others responded with “I made a mistake and took a second bite and now I need to throw it away because I just can’t stop myself from making the same mistake. On a more positive note some of my other co-workers (mostly the vegans and health nuts) love them and said the cookies were delicious. I wish there was a place to post a picture of what my co-worker has re-named the Green Monster Cookies, they are very green.

    • Julie Dove says

      Hi, you mentioned using 2 cups kale, but the recipe only calls for 1 cup. And it says 1 cup raw, which means before processing it should be measured… so it sounds like you used about 4 times the amount of kale called for in the recipe. No wonder they were so awful and green LOL! Definitely worth trying the recipe again 😉

  11. Shani says

    Now I’m thinking it would be super fun to do a REALLY christmas-y version, with the kale plus some cranberries and subbing white choc chips for the dark so you end up with red, green and white! 😀

  12. Mariah says

    Made these with silk unsweetened coconut milk, coconut oil, unbleached all-purpose flour, and a mix of light brown & regular cane sugar (ran out of coconut sugar yesterday). They’re delicious!! Super duper soft cookies, almost fluffy but not cakey. I love them. However, that being said, I chopped the kale in the vitamix instead of by hand. It wasn’t liquidy at all, definitely still defined pieces, so I assumed that they’d look like hers. Nope! These cookies are super green — think avocado green!! Also, wouldn’t recommend eating them before they’ve cooled because while you can’t taste the kale, you can still smell it at that point. Overall great cookie regardless.

  13. Jan P.J. says

    Hi Miss Katie! I just made these chocolate chip kale cookies and they are oh-so-good. My parents and my healthy-skeptic brother all tried them and they said they were very good! Perfect for St. Patrick’s Day.
    Only thing though… My batter was runny. Also, after baking and cooling, they were still soft and underdone. I used the amount of kale (even less actually) and squeezed out the water. I think maybe it is because instead of using sugar, I used a mix of maple syrup and honey? Is there a way to avoid runny batter without putting in sugar? Maybe add more flour?
    Thank you so much for another tasty recipe.

  14. Rachel says

    I decided to make cookies today and saw that you put kale in these and thought, why not! I subbed almond flour, honey & added in 1 tablespoon more almond milk, more vanilla, cinnamon & a plant-based protein powder and they are so good! Would never have thought to put kale in cookies before but OMG! Thanks for the inspiration 🙂 the texture came out a bit differently as they were more fluffed up looking, but the end result is delicious, Definitely will make again and again.

  15. Kristen says

    Dear Katie,
    I just made these Kale chocolate chip cookies yesterday and they were delicious! Haha for sure not the taste I was expecting. I used Oat flour and followed the rest of the recipe. My Dad and Brother ( who are not into healthy foods like I am) came by and tried one and with shocked expressions said they were good! They proceeded to help me eat the rest of the batch. 😀
    Thanks for this recipe! It was fun to try something unexpected.

  16. Ginger says

    I made these today for a friend’s birthday because she asked me to. I thought they smelled and tasted awful. I took one bite and spit it out. My friend thought they were good though she said you could tell there was kale in them. She makes smoothies with kale, so she’s used to the taste.

    There are only a few vegetables I don’t like. Kale can now be added to the list. I guess if you like kale, you might like these cookies. Me, I’ll stick to the Toll House recipe.

    • Katie says

      I’d try some of her other healthy chocolate chip cookie recipes that don’t have any strange ingredients! (I can’t vouch for her chocolate chip cookies, but her gooey chocolate chip pumpkin bars, crazy ingredient chocolate cake, and chocolate chip peanut butter bars are DIVINE.) Probably because any unusual ingredients serve a specific purpose in the texture of the goodie, rather than these where the kale is just added in. Have served these on multiple occasions & they are devoured. Literally no one has guessed that the pumpkin bars have kidney beans & the crazy ingredient cake has cauliflower (makes it SO soft!).

  17. Lizzie C says

    These are SO YUMMY and super easy to make (like, incredibly easy). I did slightly less than a half cup of sugar and added some brown sugar just cuz. I also used a vanilla flavored coconut oil in addition to the vanilla, which, I think, complemented the brown sugar nicely. I also did hefty shakes of cinnamon and nutmeg. I did end up using about 1 ½ tbsp extra of almond milk. The only thing odd about the cookies was that they didn’t flatten out at all and they also didn’t really harden up, but I loved them and they reminded me of a breakfast cookie. We sprinkled coarse sea salt for added yum after taking them out of the oven!

  18. Catherine says

    I found this recipe hard to follow, my cookie balls were too big and never cooked inside or spread out. I wish you had included more detail because it seems these would have been tasty

    • Catherine says

      I’d like to edit my initial comment, these are super tasty’ but mine are super ugly! It sounds like other people had problems with theirs not spreading either…I’ll definirly be making these again and trying to tinker to get them more attractive

      • Jason Sanford says

        Hey Catherine, try just smushing them down with a spoon, either before or after baking! Hopefully that will work!

  19. Amanda says

    This is the best thing ever! I have the worst time getting spinach, or any other vegetable besides pumpkin, in my 3 year old! I actually searched for this type of recipe on Pinterest just to see if anyone had been as desperate add me to get healthy things into their kids, lol! This is exactly what I was looking for! Thanks so much for a beautiful cookie recipe that’s super healthy! I just have to use gluten free flour and I’m all set for A’s snack time! Thanks so much! ❤

  20. Jennifer says

    I don’t know what went wrong for me here. I followed the recipe exactly, but they ended up baking totally flat and spread out. Was excited to find this recipe. Mine turned out nothing like the picture.

  21. Hillary says

    Thank thank you for this recipe. My daughter has a full set of braces and expander which has prohibited her from eating many vegetables. She always says they get stuck in the wires. I super finely chop up the kale and she hasn’t noticed a problem. In fact both of my kids say these are their favorite cookies ever! Even over the traditional full sugar chocolate chip cookie. Thank you again!

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