Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

For my final recipe this week, I decided to prepare gluten-free cookies with a mix and recipe I purchased at Great Harvest Bread. For a brief period of time this past fall, I was curious about gluten free eating. I tried a few gluten free breads and quickly decided that I am partial to the breads we normally eat at our house; Dave's Killer Bread, sour dough and Great Harvest honey wheat. I have been planning to make these cookies for quite some time and finally decided to prepare them tonight. The consensus is that they are actually pretty good. There was a noticeable taste difference when I sampled the dough but it seemed to mellow when the cookies baked. The final product is definitely good; not great but good enough to eat for sure.

The mix was made of brown sugar, evaporated cane juice, garbanzo bean flour, potato starch, tapioca starch, whole grain white sorghum flour, fava bean flour, xanthan gum, baking soda, sea salt and natural vanilla powder. The recipe called for adding butter, egg, vanilla and water. The recipe also offered an egg replacement option that I thought was interesting. For an egg substitute baking option, you can combine 1 Tbsp cornstarch and 3 Tbsp water. Stir, combine and use the mixture in place of an egg. Interesting, isn't it? I had never heard of this technique.

The preparation was fairly easy. I started by creaming the butter with an electric mixer. Then I added water and vanilla and blended for 30 seconds to combine. The gluten free cookie mix was added and blended for another 2 minutes. Dough was shaped into 1 1/2" balls and three batches were cooked for 15 minutes each. Ta da! Mission accomplished. I initially questioned whether or not this recipe should count since part of it was a mix but I decided that I was being ridiculous. Of course it counts! It's something I wanted to try and it involved preparation and cooking. It definitely wasn't my most difficult recipe thus far but it was fun, the final result was good and it was interesting to taste gluten free cookies.