Best Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

These gluten free chocolate chip cookies have been a family favorite recipe for over 15 years. If you ask my kids what cookie they want, this is their first choice. What cookies should we leave out for Santa? These chocolate chip cookies. I make them for pot luck, church linger-longers, meals for friends, after school treats and on and on.

When I went gluten free over ten years ago, the original recipe for the cookies contained flour and were one of the saddest things to let go. It took me a while to adjust the recipe and figure out how to make them just as good and still be safe for me to eat.

Now we make them on a regular basis. I still take them to all of the events, but now they are gluten free. People don’t have a clue. They are just as good as they have always been.

Making Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

Because gluten free foods can be dense and tough, the first trick to these cookies is to cream the butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla much longer than you would think is required. The mix needs to go from a dark brown to light and airy. The picture here shows how light you are looking to get the mix. You can use a stand mixer or a hand-held mixer. Either work just fine.

Secondly, as you add the dry ingredients, you will want to make sure the flour is completely blended Beware not to send it flying all over your kitchen.

Finally, after the flour has mixed in well with the wet ingredients, it’s time to add the chocolate chips. The recipe says two cups chocolate chips. I’ve used semi-sweet, milk chocolate and white chocolate. All work just fine. However, I do consider this a ‘measure with your heart’ kind of moment. I probably add closer to three or four cups chocolate chips depending on the day. I keep my chocolate chips in a very large container and just pour, so it really could be any amount. It doesn’t matter — the more chocolate the better in my opinion.

For my gluten free flour I usually use Namaste one-to-one flour in cookies. It’s readily available at Costco. You can also find it online as well. Any one-to-one flour should work fine. I’ve used Measure for Measure by King Arthur Flour in the past with excellent results. As long as the flour has xanthan gum in it, it should work well.

Additionally, just a note for those gluten eating folks out there — if you can use a regular wheat based flour, it’s a straight one-to-one substitution. An all-purpose flour works best.

Then you will want to place the cookie dough onto cookie sheets. I find that cookie sheets lined with parchment paper and sprayed with a light coat of non-stick spray work best.

I typically use about a tablespoon of dough per cookie. The recipe will make roughly 36 tablespoon sized cookies depending on how many chocolate chips you add to the dough. This is the perfect size for taking to events. It’s also perfect for family because some people want one small cookie and some will eat a handful of cookies. For the people going to eat many cookies, they don’t care what size they are so it is easier to make smaller ones that will fit any preference.

The cookies will spread a little when baking, so I recommend only 12 on a large cookie sheet. When you bake the cookies it’s important to not overbake. You want the tops to stop being shiny and for the cookies to have a tiny bit of color on the edges. If you overbake they will become more crunchy and less soft.