Recently, DoubleTree by Hilton released the recipe for their infamous chocolate chip cookies. If you’ve never had a DoubleTree cookie, now you can make them at home without making a special trip to spend a night in one of their hotels. We made a batch shortly after the recipe’s release, and they’re spot on!
Since I’ve been on a copycat recipe as of late, making Domino’s cinnamon bread twists and garlic parmesan bread twists, it only felt right to put a kinda healthy spin on the DoubleTree cookies. Thanks to some sugar substitutes and a bit of protein powder, I was able to cut the calories of each cookie in half and the carbs by roughly two thirds!
DoubleTree Cookies Recipe Walkthrough
I’ll run you through a visual recipe tutorial below so you can get an idea of what to look for in each step. You’ll also find more detailed notes on ingredients in the post. So if you skip down to the recipe card and have an ingredient question, jump back up to the post.
Now, let’s bake!
Cream butter, granulated sugar, and brown sugar together in a stand mixer or food processor.
If you have a stand mixer, this recipe will be a breeze. You can also use a food processor or hand mixer in place of the stand mixer. Or worst case, you can even cream the butter and sugar by hand using a fork or whisk. It might take a little elbow grease, though!
As for ingredients in this step, the recipe calls for the real deal, full fat salted butter. Unlike my chocolate chip protein cookies that use light butter, I found these cookies got a little spongy without the real deal. I didn’t, however, try half light butter and half real butter. So you may want to experiment if you need lower fat cookies.
For the granulated sugar and brown sugar, I used Swerve which is a zero-calorie, erythritol-based sugar substitute. It tastes and measures 1:1 for sugar, and it caramelizes almost as good as the real deal so you get the crispy edges and soft center. If you want to use another sweetener, make sure it measures 1:1 for both granulated and brown sugar.
Add an egg, vanilla extract, and a splash of lemon juice.
This step is simple enough. Such a tiny amount of lemon juice may seem odd, but that’s what the original DoubleTree cookies recipe calls for! I’m sure it does some sciency stuff with the baking soda. Ya know, acids and bases and all that stuff.
Add rolled oats, all purpose flour, cinnamon, salt, baking soda, and protein powder.
Aside from the sugar substitutes, the other star of the calorie show for these cookies is protein powder. Taking the place of roughly half the all purpose flour in the original DoubleTree cookies adds reduces the carbs by nearly 50 grams.
This recipe, like all my protein powder recipes, calls for PEScience Select. This is a whey and casein blend which means it’s a bit thicker in consistency than whey-only protein powders. I always like to mention that substituting different protein powders in dough recipes is very tricky. So substitute at your own risk!
Side note: You can order small samples of PEScience if you’re new to baking with protein powder and want to do a test run. If you like it, you can use my affiliate discount code mason to save 15% off PEScience products. If you’re looking for other recipes to try with a sample pack, try my protein sugar cookies, coffee cake protein muffins, or chicken and protein waffles.
Fold in walnuts and chocolate chips.
The original DoubleTree cookies recipe calls for a HUGE amount of chocolate chips. So I scaled that back a bit to save some carbs and calories. I also used larger dark chocolate chips. You could use smaller semi-sweet chocolate chips and probably scale back even more.
As for the walnuts, I think the amount used is perfect. You get some walnut in nearly every bite, and it makes the cinnamon, chocolate, and buttery goodness really pop.
Portion the dough into 15 balls and place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
If you follow the recipe as written, you should be able to handle the cookie dough. Though the original recipe calls for using a scoop to portion out the cookies. So if you make some minor changes and notice the dough isn’t nice and neat, you can still use a spoon or scoop to transfer to a baking sheet.
And since it’s pictured here, get and use a food scale! I use a KD-8000 from MyWeight and haven’t touched a measuring cup in years.
Bake at 300ºF for 20-23 minutes or until the cookies are golden brown around the edges and slightly soft in the center.
The original DoubleTree cookies recipe notes you should let the cookies cool for an hour. They’re meant to be a little soft in the center so don’t over bake them!
Final DoubleTree Cookie Recipe Notes
In addition to ingredient modifications, I scaled the recipe down to make one batch of cookies. The original recipe makes a massive batch of cookie dough and includes notes on freezing the dough. I’m betting you could freeze this dough and bake straight from frozen as well, but I haven’t tested it.
Their instructions are to go straight from the freezer to a baking sheet and use the same temperature with an extended bake time. We tested the original recipe and found a batch of 8 cookies took around 30 minutes at 300ºF.
For an interesting alternative cook method, check out our Traeger smoked chocolate chip cookies. You can smoke the walnuts ahead of making the dough, and that’s as tasty as it sounds.
Okay, I think that covers it. If you have a recipe question, drop a comment at the bottom of the post. And if you make a modification, I’d love to hear about it!
Kinda Healthy DoubleTree Cookies
Ingredients
- 1/4 C + 2 Tbsp, 72g Swerve Brown (or a brown sugar substitute)
- 1/4 C + 2 Tbsp, 72g Swerve Granular (or a granulated sugar substitute)
- 1/2 C 112g Salted Butter*
- 1 large Egg
- 1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract
- 1/8 tsp Lemon Juice
- 1/2 C 60g All Purpose Flour
- 2 scoops, 62g Vanilla PEScience Select Protein Powder
- 1/4 C 20g Rolled Oats
- 1 tsp Cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp Baking Soda
- 2/3 C 148g Dark Chocolate Chips**
- 1/2 C 60g Shelled Walnuts
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 300°F and line a large baking sheet(s) with parchment paper.
- Cream butter, granulated sugar, and brown sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer on medium speed for about 2 minutes. (Use a hand mixer, food processor, or a fork/whisk if you don't have a stand mixer.)
- Add the egg, vanilla, and lemon juice, blending with mixer on low speed for 30 seconds, then medium speed for about 2 minutes, or until light and fluffy, scraping down bowl.
- With mixer on low speed, add the flour, protein powder, oats, baking soda, and cinnamon, mixing for about 45 seconds. Don’t over mix.
- Remove bowl from mixer and fold in the chocolate chips and walnuts.
- Portion the dough into 15 balls weighing ~45 grams each onto the baking sheet about 2" apart.
- Bake for 20 to 23 minutes, or until edges are golden brown and center is still soft.
Notes
Nutrition Information Notes
- Each cookie has 7 WW SmartPoints (blue plan).
- Nutrition facts do not include any information from the zero-calorie Swerve sweeteners. Erythritol has roughly 0.2 calories per gram so if you wanted to add it in for accurate calorie tracking, that would be around an extra 2 calories per cookie.
I plan on making these soon as your recipes haven’t disappointed me yet. Pictured is the amazing cake pop PEScience. Did you use that instead of the vanilla? I only ask because I have both on hand as well.
Good eye! I used vanilla but only had a smaller tub of cake pop handy for photos.
Made them with the CP since I had more of that on hand. Also swapped half the butter for Greek yogurt and omitted the walnuts. Kids and I enjoyed. Will be making again soon! Thanks for the great recipes!
I tried this today! So good. love the walnuts inside. Must try!!
Made these tonight, and they are scrumptious! I used PEScience Vegan vanilla protein powder. The consistency of mine was off (was very cautious when mixing, but batter came out a little dry), but the taste wasn’t lost at all. Love these and will definitely make them again. 😉
I’ve noticed in my limited experiments with the vegan protein powder that it requires a bit more liquid than the regular Select. Not much, maybe a tablespoon or two per scoop. Hope that helps in future endeavors!
I used all whey protein powder for this, and followed the rest of the recipe to a T. Each cookie before it went into the oven weighed 45 grams, and I only got 12.5 cookies. When the cookies first went into the oven, they spread out and all of the chocolate chips and walnuts stayed in the middle. I took the cookies out, ate one a few minutes after it cooled, and it was good, unfortunately not fantastic; although I’ll probably find myself digging into these later tonight.
I had a question… I’m going to bake these but was wondering what it ment when u say 1/4 + 2 ts ex..
Thank you
There’s no pretty cups measurement for 6 tablespoons. So 1/4 C (4 tablespoons) + 2 tablespoons = 6 tablespoons. Enjoy!
6 tablespoons is 3/8 cup
Yes, that’s correct.
These are AMAZING! I used all the chocolate chips like the recipe said and I love chocolate so it was perfect for me, but the cookie itself is delicious so if you’re less of a chocolate person or trying to save a few calories I’m sure they’re amazing if you opt for less! Also they stay great for a long time and taste even better 10 sec in the microwave!
Hot out of the oven cookies are a weakness.
Hands down the best thing I’ve baked using protein powder so far. I followed everything exactly except I only had mini chocolate chips. Bravo Mason!!
Well, these are the best! Me and the kids love them. We left out the nuts and added extra chocolate chips as that’s we had on hand. This was a great idea, althought we ate them too fast…
So these might not most be the most macro friendly cookies.but they are really good cookies for not being as bad (“bad” meaning
higher in carbs and No protein) as the original double tree. I eat these in my refeed days. Don’t try to change the recipe too much like butter or the type of protein. They make a big difference in taste.