Having a good chocolate chip cookie recipe is an essential part of every baker’s repertoire. Being on a gluten-free diet doesn’t mean that you have to miss out. Kids love these chewy cookies – and you won’t find adults complaining either!
I’ve been making these cookies, in one form or another, since I was a child. The original recipe was from a children’s baking book, since lost to obscurity, but forever etched in my memory.
You think I’m being dramatic here, but this recipe was my initiation into solo baking. I remember being about 9 years old, and my mum had gone somewhere for the afternoon. I thought it would be a fantastic idea to experiment – after all, the recipe was meant for children, wasn’t it? So I was damn well going to do it on my own!
I decided that instead of doing 10 cookies I was going to use the recipe and make ONE GIANT COOKIE. I called my mum to ask her a question about how the oven worked and she was understandably concerned about her child operating the oven unsupervised (there must have been someone else home, but I remember being all alone. Isn’t memory funny sometimes?).
I’d love to tell you that when my mum got back the house was covered in batter and on fire, but in reality it took a little bit longer to bake but worked perfectly. Yeah, I was a baking badass, even as a 9 year old. I wish I had a picture of you, giant cookie cake.
When I went gluten-free I was delighted that with a few tweaks here and there, and a tiny bit of experimentation, the recipe still largely worked. If you are new to gluten-free baking, have a look at the video I made below, showing you how it’s done.
So simple, even a child can do it.
Maybe just supervise them until you are absolutely sure they won’t burn the house down.
Ultimate Gluten-free Chocolate Chip Cookies
By Published: October 25, 2013
- Yield: About 10 large cookies
- Prep: 15 mins
- Cook: 10 mins
- Ready In: 25 mins
A classic chewy cookie
Ingredients
- 115g butter at room temperature
- 75g soft brown sugar
- 75g caster sugar
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 egg
- 140g plain gluten-free flour I use Dove's Farm
- 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 1 tbsp ground flaxseed optional
- 100g dark chocolate check the brand is gluten-free
- 1 tsp vanilla extract or vanilla sugar
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 190C/375F
- Cream the butter, and both types of sugar together. Add vanilla sugar or extract.
- Add an egg and mix well.
- Sift in the flour, salt and bicarbonate of soda, and mix well.
- Optional: Add the ground flaxseed and mix in.
- Chop the chocolate into small chunks and stir into the mixture.
- Scoop spoonfuls of the mixture out onto a non stick or lined baking tray.
- Bake for 8-10 minutes or until golden brown. Be careful not to let them get too dark.
- Remove the cookies from the oven and place the tray on a heatproof surface. Leave for a couple of minutes so that the cookies can harden, otherwise they will fall apart when you try to move them.
- When cooled enough to move, transfer the cookies onto a wire rack and leave to cool thoroughly.
- Course: Snack
- Skill Level: Child Friendly
These look so good! I’m going to have to make some right now! Thanks
That’s the spirit! They are exceedingly tasty 😉
These bring back happy memories!
Thank u so much for this recipe, I’ve been trying to perfect my GF choc chip cookies for probably years now and these are just delicious!!
Wonderful! Did you already make them?
Hello there,
The oven temperature you’ve listed would that be for fan assisted or should I reduce accordingly?
Thanks S
Hi Simon, yes that’s for fan assisted. However, keeping an eye on them is really the best way 🙂
Fabulous! The whole family were able to enjoy these lush chocolate chip cookies!
I love the video! You sound super professional! Lovely voice…you should be on radio!
I followed your recipe exactly, checked the cookies after 6 minutes aaaannndd…the same thing had happened as whenever I make cookies – they’d turned into a big, melted mess.
🙁 What am I doing wrong? I feel like I’m cursed!
Oh no! What butter are you using? And do you have an oven thermometer to check the temperature accurately?
Mine too!
I definitely feel as though there was an issue with this recipe… there’s no amount for vanilla listed, and the spread was absurd in the oven. I tripled the batch and when I went to bake them I only put 5 on 1 tray just to test- they spread over the entire tray. I put the next batch in muffin tins and the consistency was better suited to that.
I froze the rest of the dough in hopes that to bake from frozen will yield better results. The flavor is nice but I’m overall pretty disappointed.
Hi Jackie, really sorry that you had issues with this recipe. The vanilla should be 1 tsp – I will correct that now. There could be many reasons for the spread. It is really important that you use butter, and not margarine or other butter substitute (which have a higher water content). It’s also important to make sure the oven temperature is accurate (mine is off by about 40C – I use an oven thermometer now and ignore the dial). If you still have problems, chilling/freezing the dough will also help a great deal in reducing spread.
It’s really difficult to troubleshoot from afar, but using margarine/other spreads and oven temparature are the major reasons why cookies spread out. If you want any further info, this website has some tips: http://culinaryarts.about.com/od/bakingdesserts/fl/Why-Do-Cookies-Spread.htm
Hope this helps!
Hi Sam my name is anoushka and i am 7 years old and i love the gluten-free recipes especially the choclate chip cookies as they are my favroute
I don’t think there’s nearly enough flour in this recipe. The taste is great but they spread way too much. using half the dough, I ended up with 10 5″ diameter very flat cookies that you can’t lift off the trays. I added more flour to the rest of the dough and got 10 more 3″ well risen cookies which are perfect! I think I’ll be nearly doubling the flour when I make again.
Great recipe worked perfectly
I made choc chip
Plain and coconut
All yummy
Thank you
Do u have a newsletter
Really loved making these gluten free cookies for my granddaughter who is 9 and celiac. They did spread more than I expected but not a problem. They tasted really yummy and my granddaughter eat 3 one after the other. The only problem I had was that they didn’t go hard and chewy as I had expected but they were firm. However they tasted really good. This was the first time making cookies from this recipe and I will definately be making lots more.
I did these with margarine and didn’t have a problem. The person I was making them for is dairy free as well. The trick was I only used 1/3 of a cup instead of 1/2 a cup of butter. This only turned out about 12/14 cookies but they are very nice.
I had a very tasty failure. This was caused by my impatience. The first sheet went in when the oven wasn’t quite up to temperature. There were crispy bits, chewy bits, and very squidgy bit. The second batch was much better. My baking sheets are old and flimsy. They buckled slightly and resulted in one mega-monster, deformed cookie.
Next time, I’ll allow the oven to reach temperature first, use thicker, non-deforming sheets, and make the cookie dough blobs smaller.
It was very tasty though! I’m looking forward to better cookies when I improve my technique.