My BEST Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe

My Hubby's batch.  He likes them well done.

Om, nom, nom...

Through trial and error I have finally come up with a gluten free chocolate chip cookie that rises nice and high like a wheat flour cookie and has a perfect texture inside too.  

Here's my recipe... I hope you give it a whirl!

Begin by placing the following ingredients in your mixing bowl and blend til smooth-

3/4 cup (1 & 1/2 sticks) softened butter 

1/2 cup granulated sugar (for my batch I use organic sugar instead 1 for 1)

1 cup packed brown sugar

Next, add in the following and mix well (I use a Kitchenaid, but my Mom used to use girl power *her three daughters and a wooden spoon)-

2 large fresh eggs (room temperature)

1 Tablespoon Vanilla Extract (mine was made just for me by my BFF Michelle)

In a separate mixing bowl, mix the dry ingredients as follows...

2 cups gluten free flour* 

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

*(I make my own gluten free flour by mixing  2/3 c. almond flour, 2/3 c. coconut flour, 2/3 c. oat flour, and 2 teaspoons of xanthan gum powder to "bind it together" like gluten does wheat flour.)

Carefully add in the dry ingredients stirring slowly until well blended and then spoon in the chocolate chips.  We use 2 cups of semi-sweet chocolate chips in this house

Here's a few tips that will help make YOUR cookies tall and fluffy like the ones above. 

REFRIGERATE the dough for atleast one hour.  If you own an insulated cookie sheet, use it and LINE it with parchment paper. 

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees before baking.

I make my cookies by scooping the dough up into a small ice cream scooper.  Then, I take a spoon dipped in sugar to "squish" the balls a bit before placing them into the oven.  You can of course make smaller cookies and they'll be just as good.  

This recipe makes about 24 of these cowboy size cookies.  It would probably make 36 regular sized cookies. 

GLUTEN FREE flours generally brown faster than traditional wheat flour so check on your cookies often until you have figured out how long it will take to bake these cookies to perfection in your oven.  In my old fashioned Wedgewood propane oven it takes about 10 minutes to bake them, but ovens vary, and newer more efficient ovens may make quicker or slower work of these cookies, especially if you make them smaller than I do.  Check often the first few sheets until you figure it out.

That's all there is to it.  Please let me know how you like them.

Heidi

Stained Glass Sugar Cookies

When it's time for sweet, sugary beauty to adorn the tabletop I make these Stained Glass Sugar Cookies!  Any sugar cookie recipe will do.

They're so much fun to decorate, but may be a bit time consuming.  I love making them

 

and I really like eating them.

I decorate the snowflakes by first outlining with white icing. Let them set.  Butter inside outline with teal blue icing. Let set.  Use cake decorating bag and small tip to draw white icing lines inside blue and immediately pour granulated sugar over the cookies and tamp off excess.  That's how I create the snowy centers.

This year, the Hubby got into the fun.  He decorated the trees below with sugar and candies.  Sugar cookies are usually not this dark, but that's the way the Hubby likes them... Crisp!

The trick to having non-drippy icing lines, is to make a first pass OUTLINE with a stiff batch and let it "set" for atleast an hour before icing the interior colors. You can also use meringue powder, but I don't like it.  I used a lot of it this summer practicing for my son's wedding cake, and I don't like the pitchy taste it gives.

Stained Glass Sugar Cookie Icing Recipe:  

1 cup powdered confectioner's sugar (sifted)

2 teaspoons milk

3-4 teaspoons light corn syrup (3 tsp for "stiff batch" and 4 tsp for "buttering" cookie tops)

1/2 teaspoon almond extract or a good quality pure vanilla extract (vanilla will impart an aftertaste)

food colors (I prefer gels, they give vivid colors)

I mix well in my Kitchenaid until it's shiny and pliable.  It will stiffen as you work with it.  I soften it up again by placing it in a microwavable container and heat for 20 seconds. This is not preferred, but in my experience, it does not damage the icing.  I leave them out on the counter in a safe place overnight  to ensure the icing has fully hardened before plating or packing up.

(Each batch is enough to outline about 45-50 cookies.)  I make a separate batch for each color.  I "butter" the colored icing within the outline using a butter knife.  It works for me.  If you're a perfectionist, use a cake decorating bag, a small round tip to make outlines, and a flat tip to fill in the outline later.  Enjoy!

Wendy's Almond Meal Oatmeal Cookies

      My baby sister is sick and needs some pampering, so I decided to make up a batch of oatmeal cookies for her.  I amended the usual "Quaker Oats" recipe by changing a few things she likes, here it is...

1/2 lb. (2 sticks) softened butter
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup almond flour. I use no more than 33% because it gets too crumbly using more
2 Tbsp wheat germ
1 tsp baking soda
1 Tbsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt (optional)
1 Tbsp cold water (if needed)
3 1/2 cups organic oats

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Blend the sugars and butter until creamy, then add in the eggs, and vanilla, blending well.  In a separate bowl, mix the dry ingredients well (flour, almond meal, basking soda, salt, and cinnamon) and slowly mix in to butter/sugar mix.  Mix well.  Mix in the oats.

     My secret weapon is a large ice cream scoop.  I scoop up level spoonfuls of dough and place them on insulated cookie sheets.  Pop them into the oven for 18-20 minutes, remove from oven, let sit for a minute before removing from cookie sheet with a spatula.  Cool on racks like those below.  My large scoop makes 3-4 inch wide giant cookies.  Using this size scoop, you'll get about 30 cookies.  If you want smaller cookies, use a small scoop and adjust time in oven accordingly.

This recipe is linked up to Esther's Our Simple Country Living Christmas Cookie Swap!

Gingerbread Mania

As promised, here are a few pictures of our family decorating gingerbread houses on Thanksgiving.  You may notice that there are BIG kids in on the action. We're NEVER too grown up in this family to play.  By the time we got around to decorating the gingerbread, it was kinda late, so many of the kids look tired, they were.

My son Jon and my baby sister Wendy help my youngest niece Amelie (less than 2 yrs) make her house.

My nephew TJ, baby sister Melissa, my daughter Sam, and grandson TJ

TJ and Aurora

Our two oldest , Jesse and Angie

My handsome grandson TJ

Aurora hard at work. Jesse in the background

Amelie and Jon. Every time he put a candy on the house, Amelie would take it off and eat it...

My brother-in-laws Casey and Toby Sr. watching vintage USC/UCLA footage

Jesse and Angie really decorated their house cute, that's a turkey on the roof.

Amelie loves peppermint...

Aurora is a great artist. Her house looked like it should be a movie set prop.

Grandson's gummy bears were safe from Amelie inside his house.

My lil' sister Wendy is hard at work helping Amelie while her son Toby smiled for me.

My poor daughter Sam, she was up at 4am working in a department store, then drove here to be with us. She was really tired. Thank you Sam. I love you honey.

Aurora's house, done!

I had to abandon the small mold in favor of the pre-made house kits. it was taking too long with only one mold.  The mold only baked half a house every 45 minutes and I needed 9 houses...  I needed the oven.

I hope you and your family had the best Thanksgiving Day ever. We did.  There's nothing as energizing as spending time with loved ones.

Thanks for visiting, I hope you stop by again. I like comments.

Gingerbead Houses

We have a family tradition at Thanksgiving.  After dinner, the grown ups gather, clear the tables and set up work stations for the kids.  There are candy dishes full of red hots, peppermints, candy canes, chocolates, and every kid gets a gingerbread house to decorate and take home.  Last Christmas, my hubby got me a neat, cast iron gingerbread house mold.  I am using it to make the gingerbread cottages.  It's been a long time since I made the gingerbread houses, so I've been testing recipes this weekend and here's the best one I have found so far...  It comes right off the bottle of Grandma's Original Molasses.

GINGERBREAD COOKIES
8 Tbsp. butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup molasses
1 egg
2 cups flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. ginger
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/8 tsp. ground cloves

Put the butter, sugar and molasses in a mixing bowl and mix well.  Mix in egg.  Sift dry ingredients and slowly mix into wet ingredients.   Chill in refrigerator for 3 hours.  Heat oven to 350 degrees.  Roll out half of the dough 1/4" thick on a lightly floured board (I am using a mold this year, so I am not rolling out the dough, but in the past I have found that the less you work with this dough, the better your shapes will be, so I literally flour and roll out my dough on parchment paper, cut out my gingerbread men, pull up the scraps, and place the parchment paper covered in gingerbread men onto my double insulated cookie sheet and cook.)  The recipe says to simply flour your surface, roll out dough, cut out shapes,place them on a greased cookie sheet, and bake for 8-10 minutes.   I will post pictures of the nieces, nephews, and grandson's creations Thursday.  

Have a HAPPY THANKSGIVING!


This post is now linked up to the Barn Hop

Handmade Tuesdays

and the From the Heart Handmade Gifts Blog Hop!

Chocolate Chip Cookie mix-in-a-jar Recipe

     When my son was small, we made lots of homemade gifts for teachers and friends.  Mix-in-a-jar gifts are still a favorite of mine.  They're quick and easy to make and everybody loves time saving gifts.  Here's my son Jonnie's favorite recipe. It's adapted from my Mrs. Field's Cookie Book recipe.

Mix-In-A-Jar ingredients
2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup brown sugar (firmly packed)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 cup chocolate chips

     In a large bowl, mix the flour, baking soda and salt together well.  Layer flour mixture, brown sugar, granulated sugar, and chocolate chips.  It looks best when the flour mixture is separated from the chocolate chips because the flour particles are so small they cover up the chips, obscuring the layers. (You can see the difference in the image above.) I usually start with half of the flour mixture on the bottom, followed by half of the brown sugar, then chips, the rest of the brown sugar or white sugar and finish with the last half of the flour mixture.
     Then, type up and attach cute tags with directions and additional fresh ingredients as follows:
Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees.  Pour contents of jar into a large bowl and mix thoroughly. In another bowl, cream 1 cup softened, salted butter, 2 eggs, and 2 teaspoons of pure vanilla extract.  Mix in cookie mix.  Drop teaspoonfuls of dough onto a cookie sheet.  Bake for 8-10 minutes or until golden brown.  Cool on wire rack. Yield 4 dozen.

     That's it.  A yummy gift for teachers, friends, family, anyone with a chocolate craving. I tie the tags on with colored raffia bows or pearl cotton and use pinking shears to cut circles of fabric to cover jar lids. I'll post more pics with completed tags and gussied up jars soon.  I am working in an assembly line, one thing at a time. This recipe is LINKED UP to Homestead Revival's Barn Hop my Thanksgiving Recipe Challenge and Esther's Our Simple Country Living Christmas Cookie Swap!