This is the recipe that I used to make a lot. It was submitted by Ida Ropiecki. Sister Ida was old when I was little but, I remember her being a very sweet lady. She always brought really tasty desserts to church functions. I have never really been a "nut in my dessert items" kind of girl but, these cookies were so good.﻿

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I love to lurk on Pinterest and blogs reading and pinning recipes. I also love cookbooks. I collect them and I read them cover to cover. Here's the thing . . . I almost NEVER make the recipe exactly as written. I have been cooking and baking a long time and I know what my family likes and what they don't. I also have learned to substitute ingredients and have found that I sometimes like the sub better than the original. Since July 29, 2013, I have adapted my fair share of recipes to suit our new lifestyle. There is a LOT of material out there on grain free and sugar free recipes but, I have never found one that was perfect for my family as it was. I am always tweaking. This is a recipe that is sort of the love child of a cookie recipe from an old, stained church cookbook and the skills I have learned over the past year or so adapting recipes. I have used this cookbook for as long as I have been able to cook alone. The copyright is 1981! As you can see, it is well used and well loved!My crew really only ALWAYS wants chocolate chips in EVERYTHING . . . So, here is what I did to get what you see in the picture below. I call them "Chocolate Chip Cheese Cake Cookies" or "C to the 5th"! Sorry! Cheesy teacher humor! Back to the recipe!8 oz 1/3 fat Philadelphia cream cheese, softened2 Tbsp salted butter, softened1 Tbsp natural peanut butterI put these in a large bowl and because I am impatient and didn't want to wait for them to soften, I took my cold ingredients and nuked them for 30 seconds in the microwave. I whipped them together with my hand mixer and added:1 cup xylitol1 tsp pure vanilla extractI whipped these until all was incorporated and fluffy . . . maybe a minute. Then I added:3 eggsI mixed after each egg and as I mixed, the batter got fluffier. Then I added:1/4 tsp sea salt (you could add more if you use unsalted butter but, I used salted.)1/2 tsp xantham gum1 tsp baking powder2/3 cup almond flour1 scoop (1/3 cup) vanilla whey protein powder (I used Jay Robb.)I mixed it all together being careful to get all the almond flour lumps smoothed out. Then I added:2 cups sugar free chocolate chips!!! ((GASP!!!))I know that's a lot but, my motto is "Go BIG, or Go home!" We went big! I mixed these in with the spatula and stuck the bowl in the fridge while I preheated the oven to 350 degrees. The batter is just that . . . a batter. It is super soft and needs to be chilled or it will spread really quickly. 10 minutes does the trick. I lined a cookie sheet with parchment paper and used my small Pampered Chef cookie scoop to scoop even balls of batter onto the sheet. I baked for 15 minutes (or until the edges are golden). I let them cool a few minutes on the sheet before I transferred the cookies to the counter to finish cooling. I got exactly 50 cookies from this recipe but, the last 2 cookies were larger than the rest of them. Here is a close up! It looks like a chocolate chip cookie but . . . one bite reveals the lovely taste of cheese cake! What a happy surprise!Each cookie has 50 calories, 2.5g fat, 0.6g net carbs and 1.3g protein. If you follow THM, these cookies are S! I ate 3 while I was baking them! Don't you wish your cookie looked just like this?! Go! Make these NOW!!!Just a few notes:* I like 1/3 fat Philly because there is no carrageenan and it has the lowest carbs.* You could do half chocolate chips and half chopped nuts of some sort but . . . why?* I wanted these to be soft. They are the consistency of Soft Batch cookies from Keebler. The original cookies are dense and the recipe calls for 2 cups of flour and 1 cup of nuts. I cut back on the butter and added an extra egg. I used a total of 1 cup of dry ingredients (2/3 cup almond flour and 1/3 cup whey protein powder). Protein powder (much like coconut flour) will soak up moisture in a recipe. You can always add but, you can't take away, so if you want a denser cookie, go with 1 cup of almond flour and 1 scoop of whey. Mix it and check your consistency. Then, add your extra whey a tablespoon at a time until the batter looks right to you.ENJOY!!!