Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies (Take 1)

I’m enjoying the ongoing coconut flour experiments. This time, I went for a classic: chocolate chip cookies. Please bear in mind, these aren’t specifically low-carb chocolate chip cookies. I used actual sugar and actual chocolate chips in this one. Although if they’re going to just be a treat, and if you’re on maintenance, they can certainly fit into a low-carb lifestyle.

There are two main problems with using the coconut flour. One is that the cookies don’t flatten and spread like wheat flour cookies do. They stayed in virtually the same shapes in which I plopped them on the baking sheets. The other issue is that they don’t get crispy on the edges, which may also be a product of wheat.

Nevertheless, these are good little cookies. They taste like regular chocolate chip cookies, and they have a pretty good texture (although there’s always room for improvement). They’re more soft and crumbly than gooey, which is always the goal for a good CCC.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter (1 stick), softened
1/3 cup dark brown sugar
1/3 cup Splenda
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup coconut flour
1/4 cup almond meal/flour
2 Tbsp heavy cream
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Mix the wet stuff, then add the dry stuff in shifts until it’s all combined. Stir in the chips by hand last. (If you’ve ever made CCCs before, this is the standard M.O.) Bake at 400° for 10-12 minutes. Makes 25 cookies.

All right, so. I made this recipe from a combination of various online sources and the classic Toll House recipe on the bag of chips. I used a mix of brown sugar and Splenda, to cut down on some of the carbs. I used dark brown sugar because that’s what was in the house (Scott uses a little bit in his rub when he does baby-back ribs).

The original Toll House recipe calls for baking soda, but the only baking soda in my house is in an open container in the fridge. I don’t think the stuff that absorbs fridge odors should go in the cookies, so I used baking powder instead. One of the ingredients in baking powder is baking soda, so it got in there in a way.

The cream was a last-minute addition, since the batter looked a little thick. I’m glad I added it, and may add a bit more last time to make the cookies even moister. Is moister a word? Well, it is now. Wait, more moist?

Anyhoo. Good flavor, so now future tweaks will include trying to figure out moistness and outer crispitude. And yes, crispitude is definitely a word.

OH, also! Note that one cookie looks more like a Chips Ahoy. You know how when you make CCCs, there’s always the last bit of dough that doesn’t have any chips in it? Yeah, so I just took some chips by hand and studded them in that last sad dough. I think next time, I’ll do that with all of the cookies. It makes them flatter and more uniformly round, gives you a nice even dispersal of chips, and probably uses less chips per cookie than the random stir-in method.

Nutrition: 87 calories / 6.5g fat / 6g carb / 1.5g carbohydrate / 1.5g protein (per cookie, 25-cookie batch)