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Tigernut Chocolate Chip Cookies – Grain Free, Nut Free, Paleo

ByLaurie Neverman

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These tigernut chocolate chip cookies are a uniquely delicious take on America’s favorite homemade cookie. We first gave these a try for New Year’s Eve, when we had friends with food allergies visiting. Since then we’ve made them a number of times using different sugars and different fats. The texture changes a bit, but all variations are tasty.

tigernut flour chocolate chip cookies

In this post, we’ll explain what tigernut flour is, plus share the recipe and some variations.

What is Tigernut Flour?

Tigernuts (Cyperus esculentus) are not nuts at all, but small tubers (root veggies). They are also known as yellow nutsedge or “chufa” in Spanish. They’ve been consumed for over 4000 years, and were even found buried in Egyptian tombs.

The plants can be invasive, and yields per acre are low. (Think about the logistics of harvesting thousands of marble size roots.) With a little help from modern machinery, the plant is gaining back popularity as a food crop. (You can grow your own, too, if you are so inclined.)

Tigernuts have a mildly sweet taste, making them an excellent fit for desserts and sweet beverages. The flavor is similar to almond flour, but a bit sweeter, providing that perfectly chewy texture for these tigernut chocolate chip cookies.

High in resistant starch, tigernuts act as a probiotic. One ounce has 40% of your recommended daily fiber intake, and is high in iron, magnesium, zinc an d vitamins E and C. They are also gluten free and paleo friendly, and are safe for those avoiding nuts and coconut.

Note – the resistant starch in tigernut flour may cause gas for some. As tempting as it may be, don’t eat all the cookies in one sitting.

We’ve been using Anthony’s Organic Tiger Nut Flour with good results.

Tigernut Chocolate Chip Cookies – Grain Free, Nut Free, Dairy Free

This tigernut chocolate chip cookie recipe is adapted from Paleo’ish on a Dime. We  were looking for a nut free, dairy free chocolate chip cookie, but this recipe can also be coconut free, vegan, and a paleo chocolate chip cookie – depending on ingredient choices.

f you don’t have tigernut flour – coconut flour is probably the closest substitute, but it tends to be a little more gritty. Almond flour is closer in flavor, but the texture is different. Stick with coconut oil or palm shortening if you need to stay dairy free and vegan.

If you need to make the recipe AIP compliant, use carob chips instead of chocolate chips. We like Enjoy Life chocolate chunks because they are free of the top eight common food allergens.

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tingernut chocolate chip cookies
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Tigernut Chocolate Chip Cookies – Grain Free, Nut Free, Paleo

tigernut flour chocolate chip cookies
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5 from 4 reviews

These tigernut chocolate chip cookies are a uniquely delicious take on America’s favorite homemade cookie.

  • Author: Laurie Neverman
  • Prep Time: 5 minutes
  • Cook Time: 15 minutes
  • Total Time: 20 minutes
  • Yield: 10 1x
  • Category: cookies
  • Method: baking
  • Cuisine: American

Ingredients

Units Scale
  • 1/2 cup granulated sugar (cane, maple or coconut)
  • 1/4 cup maple syrup
  • 3 tbsp coconut oil, sustainably harvested palm shortening, butter or ghee
  • 2 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1/4 tsp sea salt
  • 1/4 tsp baking soda
  • 1 cup tigernut flour
  • 1/4 cup chocolate chips

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F and line a baking sheet with parchment.
  2. In a medium bowl, blend together sugar, maple syrup and fat (coconut oil, shortening, butter or ghee).
  3. Stir in dry ingredients, including chocolate chips.
  4. Form cookie dough into 10 equal balls and space evenly on the baking sheet. Flatten slightly for a crispier cookie, or leave rounded for a cookie with a softer center.
  5. Bake cookies for 15 minutes, or until the cookies are a light golden brown and soft set in the centers. Remove from the oven and allow them to cool completely on the baking sheet.
  6. Store in a sealed container and use within one week, or freeze for longer storage.

Share a photo and tag us — we can’t wait to see what you’ve made!

More Recipes for Less Sweet Treats

Looking for gluten free recipes with less sugar or no refined sugar that still satisfy a sweet tooth? We have a number of Common Sense Home recipes for you to enjoy, including:

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20 Comments

  1. Great recipe! But mine spread out and into one another and turned out super thin and crispy, not at all like the picture. Good, but not as expected. Then again, I sometimes just pour and don’t measure! (Guilty here too!) I used half refined coconut oil and half palm shortening because it usually gives me more of a butter consistency. I did not measure my vanilla or maple syrup and probably over poured both a bit! I also used coconut sugar instead of cane. Other than that, I followed the recipe. I usually just toss things together but I figured I’d use a tiger nut flour recipe since these were for someone. It wasn’t as successful as I had hoped because I guess I just messed with the recipe anyway! Ha! I work best when I work intuitively, so I’ll probably just create my own recipe based on like 5 others as usual. Haha! Great recipe though! Simple and delicious flavors. I think if I would have actually measured or cut down the fats since I over poured the liquids, I would have had better results. But they’re crisp and carmelized the whole way through and really good like that, just not what I was going for. Thanks for the recipe!

    Reply

  2. I wondered what to do with my tigernut flour since I’m AIP. Well…… this is it! I made a double batch- one with Enjoy Life choc chips/the other half AIP cranberries. OMGoodness these are fabulous and easy. I will be making more of these—- I’m afraid they may be eaten soon!! Lol



    Reply

  3. These cookies are so good they fooled me into thinking the AIP diet would be easy! Every other recipe I’ve tried since has been terrible, but these are so delicious. Thank you!

    Reply

    1. I’m glad they worked well for you. It can definitely be tricky navigating specific diet requirements. Over the years, I’ve eaten dairy free and gluten free at times, and prepped recipes for friends with different allergies or those eating low carb, and the substitute ingredients can be good, but they don’t behave quite the same.

      Reply

  4. So yummy! I used the coconut sugar for the sugar and the maple syrup. Mine came out flat and with a bit of a candied sugar spread. Ideas? More flour? I love the taste!!



    Reply

    1. Yes, I’d try a little more flour. A little bit of cassava flour may help to tighten the dough and keep it from spreading, too.

      Reply

      1. That’s what I usually do is add cassava to act like a gluten in a wheat flour. I thought of adding some but tried to just follow and didn’t anyway. Ha! I’m glad to read this advice because it validates the fleeting idea that I ignored and I will try it in the next batch. I also just like using a few flours together so there’s not as much aftertaste. I’m still feeling this one in my mouth so I think I will use cassava or arrowroot flour with a little coconut flour to substitute half the tiger nut flour. That usually creates a nice texture and flavor for me. I bake “weirdo chocolate cake” this way and it makes for a delicious texture. I call it weirdo because I eat nearly anything so long as it’s not conventional, but I have a lot of friends with very strict diets and have had to create things without almond flour or wheat and I don’t bake with dairy and egg so I’ve experimented with “weird” ingredients. Weird for a conventional person. I consider my friends weirdos like me and we embrace the title because our level of natural is weird to many but fun for us! Adding ground chia and flax soaked in water would also add more filling nutrients and help bind them a bit maybe. I usually like to sneak in things that serve purpose and make it worth eating something. I want to be satiated so it only takes one or two, not a dozen to make me feel fulfilled! What I like about this recipe though is that it is simple and don’t contain a lot of ingredients or extra weird ones that are hard to find. Yet it is a great base recipe to experiment with and weird out as much as you’d like! Nice foundation! Again, thanks!

        Reply

        1. I’ve noticed that different brands of ingredients, and even different batches of the same brand can behave differently while baking. These cookies are usually pretty consistent for us, but other recipes we’ve been using for years are baking up strangely, with a different texture than normal. It’s gotten to the point where I’m reluctant to add more recipes to the website, because ingredients have changed so much (and continue to change).

          Baking for different dietary needs can be challenging, because it introduces another set of variables. Trusting your intuition and tweaking as needed makes a lot of sense.

          Reply

  5. I have tried 3 different variations and they all turned out great
    Coconut oil – a little coconut flavor
    Palm shortening and carob nibs great
    Butter great also

    Reply

  6. These are so so good! I play around with changing the recipe up and they always still turn out amazing. I often add shredded coconut, and will use macadamia nuts if I don’t have chocolate chips and they are so good. I also always omit the sugar, and sometimes reduce the maple syrup or use honey instead. Because the tigernut flour is sweet, they are still so good.

    Reply

  8. This came out delicious. I added 1 egg and changed it to about 1 3/4 cup tigernut b/c it was too sweet for our taste buds. Next time i think i can even do 2 1/4 cups tigernut to decrease the sweetness just a tad more. Thank you for sharing this.



    Reply

        1. The maple syrup helps to stick the cookies together and give them even browning. Not quite sure how well they would hold together without it, but it you want you can give it a try. If they completely fall apart, you could dump them in a bowl, pour some milk on and call it granola.

          Reply