If you grew up hitting the Discount Hostess Store loading up on Snowballs, Cupcakes and Ho Ho’s… this post is for you!
These VEGAN chocolate pinwheels totally give me Swiss Cake Roll feels… minus the dairy, sugar, additives and fat!
Hostess treats are such a great memory for me. My parents would take us to the Hostess Store (which was indeed a discount store because when you’re loading up on unhealthy sh?! you want a bargain) and would let us pick out multiple goodies to fill our lunch boxes with each week.
The Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls were my fave with their firm exterior chocolate coating, butted up next to some spungy chocolate cake before you found yourself biting into a whipped-creamy center… dessert perfection!
While I haven’t touch any such dessert in a good 20-years, I do still appreciate a solid sweet treat!
The chocolate in these pinwheels is a standard raw food concoction that’s the base off all my Superfood Truffles: dates, nuts, cacao powder, vanilla, sea salt.
You blend all those ingredients in a blender until it turns into dough.
The creamy inside is a mixture of this non-dairy cream cheese and a few tablespoons of this incredible probiotic: COYO Coconut Yogurt.
It’s dairy-free and helps up the nutrient content of the pinwheel, plus it helps make the center light and fluffy.
You simply blend the yogurt and cream cheese with a little sweetener, chill it, then assemble your cookie.
Just roll out your dough in between parchment paper.
Evenly spread out your cream cheese mixture.
Peel the edge of the parchment paper to assist in your rolling. Roll it up tight and pop it in the freezer.
Once it sets up, take it out and slice it into even slices and serve.
You’re left with a rich, soft, chocolate cookie that is almost brownie-like, while the center is a soft, slightly tangy cream cheese middle that tastes amazing together.
You’ll feel like you’re eating a rich dessert, but in fact you’ll be getting hit with a nice dose of protein, probiotics, fiber and antioxidants!
To top it off… these can actually be stored in the freezer OR fridge, but when you store it in the freezer I discovered it totally tastes like an ice cream sandwich! #mindblown
So, if you’re wanted a chilled cookie or a frozen summer treat, this pinwheel is for you! 😋
Chocolate Pinwheel Cookies Ingredients:
•1 ½ cups raw almonds
•1 ½ cups medjool dates (pitted)
•¼ cup raw cacao powder
•½ tsp no alcohol vanilla extract
•¼ tsp pink salt
For the filling:
•8 oz Daiya dairy-free cream cheese
•2 Tbsp COYO coconut yogurt
•5 Tbsp grade A maple syrup
•½ tsp no alcohol vanilla extract
Directions:
- In a high powered blender blend almonds, dates, cacao powder, vanilla and salt and blend until mixture becomes doughy. (Do not over mix. Blend, scrapes sides down, blend more.)
- Scoop out dough and form it into a ball. Place dough in fridge to let it set up while you make the filling.
- In a high powered blender blend cream cheese, yogurt, syrup and vanilla for a few *minutes to help it thicken. Pour filling into a bowl and place it in the freezer for 10 minutes to set up.
- Assemble cookies: place chilled dough in between two pieces of parchment paper and roll with a rolling pin until flat.
- Pour filling onto cookie, spreading it out evenly (might not need all of the filling).
- Roll up cookies by using the parchment paper to help guide you, place the rolled up cookie inside the freezer for 30 minutes to firm up before slicing.
- Take pinwheels out of freezer and cut pinwheels to desired thickness and serve.
- Store in a sealed container inside the freezer for more frozen/ice cream-like cookies OR the refrigerator for softer cookies.
NOTES:
*When making the chocolate dough, if mixture won’t move well in blender, take half of the dough out and blend just half of the mixture until dates are chopped up. Then, remove blended dough and set aside, add remaining dough and blend it, then combine the two halves by hand.
*If you don’t want to make the cookies, you can make just the chocolate dough and form into small balls to make chocolate truffles.
*Recipe adapted from Pamela Salzman’s Raw Oreo Cookies
