Raw Chocolate Chip Cookie Sandwiches
No-bake chocolate chip cookies made with cashews, almond flour, and dates, sandwiched around a creamy vanilla cashew filling, like a homemade Chipwich, with no oven or freezer required.
Yield: About 26 small sandwiches · Active: 30 min · Total: 3 hours, including chilling · Year-round · Best eaten: early afternoon
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Ingredients
Cookies
1½ cups cashews (dry, not soaked)
1½ cups blanched almond flour
6 Medjool dates, pitted, soaked 10 minutes, and drained very well
1–2 tbsp coconut sugar
2 tbsp coconut oil, melted
1 tsp vanilla bean powder
Pinch of Baja Gold sea salt
½ cup cacao nibs or dark chocolate chips
Vanilla cream filling
2 cups cashews, soaked at least 4 hours and drained
½ cup full-fat coconut cream
¼ cup coconut oil, melted
¼ cup maple syrup
Optional: 1 tbsp mesquite powder
Seeds of 1 vanilla bean (or 1 tsp vanilla bean powder)
Pinch of Baja Gold sea salt
1–3 tbsp water, as needed to blend
Method
Make the dough. Process everything except the cacao nibs in a food processor until it comes together into a dough. Add the cacao nibs, and pulse just a few times, so they stay visible.
Roll and cut. Roll the dough between two sheets of parchment to about ¼ inch thick, and cut it into 2-inch rounds (the second-smallest Linzer cookie cutter works well). Re-roll the scraps, and cut more.
Chill the rounds on a parchment-lined tray for 1 hour.
Make the filling. Blend all the filling ingredients in a high-speed blender until completely smooth and thick, adding water only if needed. Refrigerate 1 hour, until firm enough to spread.
Sandwich. Spread about 1 tbsp filling between two cookies.
Chill until set.
A note on “raw”: Every cashew sold has been heat-treated to remove the caustic oil in its shell, and U.S. almonds are pasteurized by law, so “raw” here means no-bake.
Storage
Refrigerated up to 5 days, or frozen up to 1 month. Keep them chilled, since the filling softens at room temperature.
Nourishment Notes
Almond flour and cashews do different jobs in the cookie: the almond flour keeps it tender and dry enough to roll, while the cashews make it rich and help it hold together. The cacao nibs bring the crunch that makes it taste like a chocolate chip cookie, rather than a nut bar. The proportions matter: too many cashews, and the cookies turn greasy; too much almond flour, and they crumble.
Mesquite powder is a sweet, malty flour ground from the dried pods of the mesquite tree, used by Indigenous peoples of the American Southwest and northern Mexico for thousands of years. It has a caramel-and-cocoa flavor that gives the vanilla cream more depth, but the recipe works well without it, too.
The original Chipwich, a chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwich, was created in 1981 by Richard LaMotta and first sold from street carts in New York City. This version swaps the ice cream for a cashew cream that keeps in the fridge, so there’s no freezer needed.
Cashews — magnesium, copper, and zinc.
Almond flour — vitamin E, magnesium, and monounsaturated fats.
Cacao nibs — magnesium, iron, fiber, and flavanols.
Medjool dates — potassium, magnesium, and fiber.
Coconut cream and coconut oil — lauric acid, which helps the filling set firm.
For your cycle: The cacao nibs’ and nuts’ magnesium make these a satisfying treat in the luteal phase, when cravings for something sweet often rise.
Sourcing
Cashews — organic (every cashew sold has been heat-treated, even “raw” ones)
Almond flour — organic and blanched (keep it in the fridge)
Medjool dates — organic, soft, and plump
Cacao nibs or dark chocolate chips — organic; chocolate chips 70% or darker, ideally sweetened with coconut sugar
Coconut cream and coconut oil — organic, full-fat coconut cream with no guar gum; organic, virgin coconut oil
Mesquite powder (optional) — organic
Maple syrup and coconut sugar — organic Grade A dark maple syrup; organic coconut sugar
Vanilla — organic vanilla beans or vanilla bean powder
Salt — Baja Gold sea salt
— Anna aka Food Marshall