Going gluten free was not easy - and the first month or two were definitely the hardest. I literally starting crying at a restaurant when I couldn't have their sourdough French toast! (I was pregnant at the time, so cut me some slack!) I missed it so much! And a month in, I was literally dreaming of cupcakes on more than a few nights. I was miserable. But it got easier, and a big part of it getting easier was learning how to bring treats back into my life.
And if you have chosen a gluten free lifestyle, or a gluten free lifestyle was forced upon you as was the case in my world, I would like to share some wisdom I actually stumbled upon.
I spent three months one summer in college perfecting my chocolate chip cookie recipe. Needless to say, the gluten free version took longer than that. Gluten free baking is beyond tricky to figure out, but not difficult at all to do once you know how it works.
With gluten free cookies you usually get cookies that are crispy and hard (and not bad if that's the kind of cookie you like) or grainy and crumbly and okay I guess, but they often don't compare to their gluten filled counterparts. I found myself missing the chewy cookies in particular, so I was determined to figure it out. And I stumbled onto a technique totally on accident that seemed to solve this problem.
So here's my recipe and my accidental secret technique for non grainy gluten free chocolate chip cookies:
You will need the following ingredients (makes about 24 cookies depending on how big you make your cookies):
1 stick (1/2 cup) of butter
3/8 cup white sugar
3/8 cup packed brown sugar*
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 and 1/4 cup all purpose baking gluten free flour (I have lots of thoughts on GF flours after the recipe)
Chocolate chips to taste! (Like 1/2 cup - 1 cup)
Another 3 tbs of gluten free flour to be used later.
You don't have to let the butter soften, but I recommend it. The dough will come together way faster if you do. Cream the butter with the white and brown sugars. When it is uniform in texture, add the egg and the vanilla. Mix again until uniform in texture.
You are supposed to add the salt and baking soda to the 1 and 1/4 cup of flour before hand, but I'm usually reluctant to dirty the extra bowl, so I typically add the salt and baking soda to the dough mix right after the egg and vanilla and have not noticed any problems with this.
Then add the 1 and 1/4 cup of flour and mix until uniform in texture. Then add the chocolate chips and mix until uniformly distributed.
If you're impatient like me and unwilling to wait, you'll want to bake them now right? But if you do, you end up with flat crumbling cookies that are grainy in texture. If you want those chewy cookies again, you must be a bit more patient (and go through a few extra steps).
The next step is to chill the dough. I don't know how long. Probably at least three hours, but I usually wait over night. The dough has to be hard as well as cold.
Then take the dough back out and add 3 more tablespoons of gluten free flour. The dough has to be cold when you do this. If you let it warm back up to room temperature it will not work (you'll still get grainy crumbly cookies). You can let the dough soften a bit, but not for longer than 20 minutes - it has to be cold (maybe less in the summer). It's a bit challenging to work in the extra flour when it's still hard, so typically I first break up the dough by scraping it up from the surface of the bowl and break it apart into chunks. Then I coat these rock looking pieces with the extra flour and use the back of a spoon and press the flour into it. I continue to do this until I can no longer see any external flour and the dough is worked back into one mass without any flour at the bottom of the bowl.
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| Chilled dough. |
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| Chilled dough broken into pieces |
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| Coated in flour |
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| Pressing the flour into the dough. |
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| Holding the spoon in a fist works better. |
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| All worked back together. |
You can bake the cookies now. Or you can allow the dough to rise to room temperature (helps with baking times). Also, at room temperature you may notice that the dough has a stretchy quality it didn't have before you added the flour to the cold dough. Or you can bake some now, and refrigerate the rest later. When you pull it out of the fridge the second time the dough is still fine for chewy non grainy cookies - you don't need to add more flour to it.
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| Stretchy quality |
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| Ready to bake! |
Then you have a bunch of amazing cookies that you can give to people or horde completely to yourself. Most of my friends don't realize they're gluten free until they realize I'm eating one too! Yay!!
Gluten Free Flour
This recipe and technique will work with any old all purpose gluten free baking flour you can buy at the store. I have made these cookies with two or three different brands and it's always still worked if you add the extra flour to the chilled dough. I typically don't use the pre-packaged flours though because they are a) more expensive, and b) they are still more grainy so if I'm in a rush and don't have time to chill my dough, my cookies come out even more grainy! Bleh!
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| Possible container for GF flour OXO Good Grips Bought mine from Bed, Bath, and Beyond |
I used to hate making my own gluten free flour because it took forever to measure using the measuring cups and I always spilled some of my ingredients and felt frustrated by that. But then I realized that I could convert it to weight measurements. Now I just throw my flour container on the kitchen scale and just pour in the ingredients to the right number (zeroing the scale between ingredients). Once they are all in - I seal it closed, shake it up a lot and let entropy do its job! It takes less than five minutes and one batch usually lasts a month or so (depending on how much baking we do).
Gluten Free Flour Blend Recipe
(originally from Carol Kicinski - I just converted it to weight measurements):
441 grams (4 and 1/2 cups) white rice flour - get a superfine blend OR buy it from an Asian market - far cheaper at an Asian Market. The regular blend is grainy!! I hate grainy!!
162 grams (1 and 1/2 cups) Glutinous Rice Flour (or sometimes sweet rice flour) - this flour is unfortunately named - there's no gluten in it - it's just really sticky and that where it gets its name. (Again get superfine or from an Asian Market).
316 grams (2 cups) potato starch (this is NOT the same thing as potato flour). This is actually your most expensive ingredient as far as I can tell. I have only found it at Whole Foods. That's probably the problem...
112 grams (1 cup) tapioca starch (this IS the same thing as tapioca flour). You can find this far cheaper at an Asian market as well - usually right next to the rice flours!
9 grams (4 tsps) of xanthum gum. Xanthum gum may seem more expensive than the potato starch, but you use so little of it each time, one bag will last me a year or more. It is recommended that you refrigerate it though.
Mix it all together! (or shake it all together in your awesome GF flour container!) And you can have cookies and cupcakes again! It also fries really really well.
Please note, that gluten free flour is NOT better for you just because it is gluten free. In fact, it is usually higher on the glycemic index meaning if you're diabetic or pre-diabetic this stuff is worse that processed white flour. But we're making cookies, so I figured you were not looking for healthy.
*When it comes to brown sugar, what type you use will change the flavor and texture of your cookie slightly. Dark brown will make for a chewier cookie with more depth of flavor. I want to say it tastes a bit more like maple, but there's no actual maple, so this is slightly inaccurate - it tastes more like whatever they add to the brown sugar to make it brown - some kind of syrup probably. Light brown sugar creates a lighter more airy cookie, with a lighter flavor. Golden brown is the middle of these, and is actually my least favorite - like it's the worst of both worlds or something. But really, even with golden brown, cookies are always still delicious!
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