Who would have thought a cookie recipe could turn out to be such a challenge? If you bake with gluten, cookies are one of the easiest recipes to make. Even when baking gluten free, classic drop cookies, like chocolate chip, are fairly simple to create. A basic combination of flour, butter, sugar and eggs. In other words, not particularly difficult. When baking in general, the ratios of liquid to flour, and the proportions of butter and eggs are usually what determines the success of a recipe. This becomes even more important when creating a gluten free recipe. As a rule, most gluten free flours are not able to absorb high amounts of fat in the same way that gluten flours can. As a result, we were a little worried when first looking over this recipe and seeing that it called for 2 cups of butter in relation to 2 cups of flour. As always, when testing an unfamiliar recipe, we only make half a batch in order to limit the possible wasting of ingredients. Making this recipe, we were especially happy we followed this rule.
Since the rules of TWD encourage everyone that participates to generally follow the recipes as laid out in Baking with Julia, we followed these guidelines by only substituting the regular flour for gluten free, and the sugar for sucanat. So far so good. Sometimes this approach works, and other times it leads to a big disaster. Our first attempt at this recipe was no exception, as you can see from the following photo.
What a mess. Everything about the recipe seemed fine right up until it was time to bake. The dough was chilled for the required amount of time, and then dropped by the tablespoonful onto sil-pat lined baking sheets. After ten minutes in the oven, the butter was clearly the winner. It went everywhere. We almost gave up the idea of making this recipe again after ending up with such greasy, wafer thin “cookies.” To be honest, they really didn’t resemble cookies at all. Is it the elusive special Parisian butter, or the Parisian air that makes the recipe in the book work? Who knows? It certainly didn’t work for us.
After we were done cleaning up the first fiasco, we decided right away to cut the butter in half, and increase the amount of flour by 1/8 cup. Originally, we used a flour blend made up of more tapioca than brown rice. However, thinking this may have been part of the problem, with the second batch, we flipped the ratio and used more brown rice flour, with a much smaller addition of tapioca and sweet rice. We also subbed out baking powder for baking soda, which ended up resulting in fluffier cookies than perhaps the original creator of the recipe intended.
With this second batch, the end result was at least something resembling a cookie. We loved it. It tasted great, we even liked the texture, but we altered the recipe so much, that it no longer completely resembled the original. In order to stay closer to the original recipe, we still feel it would have to be tweaked a little further. But not by us. We usually don’t favor recipes that call for excessive amounts of fat or sugar. I think at the end, we all have a favorite “go to” recipe for chocolate chip cookies. This one, sadly enough, just did not become ours.
This week’s host is Peggy of Galettista. She has done an absolutely beautiful job with these cookies, and also gives the precise recipe on her site. Do check out all of the other TWD participants’ creations by going to the Tuesdays with Dorie website.
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Oh, boy have I ever been there done that sort of thing with cookies…I had a super mess trying to recreate a nice tasting gluten-free sugar cookie.
Thanks for your hard work and for posting it.
Linda
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Hi Linda, some recipes just seem to go that way, even with your best efforts.
Wow! You really had to work at this one! Congrats for sticking with it! Kristine Mika
We were reasonably happy with the second batch, but not enough to call this our favorite chocolate chip recipe.
I’m impressed how chunky your cookies turned out! Mine got pretty flat during the baking process.
Only our second batch turned out this way. Our first one was a complete disaster. While we liked the overall result, this recipe was not our favorite.
It sounds like you had a challenge on your hand for sure, but your re-done version looks like it came out on top.
Cher, cookie recipes are generally fairly easy to convert to gluten free. This is the first one that proved us wrong. Too much butter, the refrigeration time, the oven temperature – who knows? Just don’t feel like wasting good ingredients on yet another batch. I think we all have our favorite recipe, and this one just wasn’t ours.
I have to say, I look forward to your posts and your endeavours to make recipes gluten free. Your cookies do look great.
Thanks, Sandra. We do believe that most recipes can be converted into gluten free versions. Some just need a little more effort than others.
Wow, your gluten free version of this cookie turned out best of all…not a bit flat. Sorry it took two tries…but I’m still impressed!
Our version probably didn’t look quite like the original gluten version in the book. But for all intends and purposes, we were quite satisfied with our results.
I admire you so much for the patience you have for taking the time to make these recipes gluten-free. Your cookies turned out so beautiful and much fluffier than my gluten ones. Beautiful job!
Thanks, Elaine. Maybe substituting baking powder for baking soda made the difference.
Inge and Gillian: love the pictures of your wonderful cookies – I have read the text carefully and I am most intruiged, I think baking with brwon rice flour sounds like something I would really like to try out. And your cookies certainly look wonderful, they have a nice color and texture and look simply delicious – respect, again, for putting so much love and effort in making this recipe work for you!
Have a wonderful Thursday!
Thanks, Andrea. Not all recipe turn out exactly as you expect on the first try. For our last version of this recipe the combination of brown rice and tapioca flours had to be changed in order to create a more cohesive result. For a half recipe, we used 3/4 cup brown rice flour, 1/4 cup tapioca flour and 1/8 cup of sweet rice flour with the addition of 1/2 tsp. of guar gum. We also substituted 1 tsp. of baking powder in lieu of baking soda, and reduced the amount of butter by half (2oz.). As you already know, we never use white sugar and nearly always reduce the amount called for in a recipe. This one was no different. For a half batch we used 1/2 cup of sucanat (evaporated cane juice). Hope this helps in your experiments with the recipe. If you do try it, let us know how it turns out. Best wishes, Inge and Gillian
Your gluten free version turned out perfect!!!!! So beautiful!!!!
Of course all this great work is very impressive!!!
Well done!!!
Thanks.
Well done for getting this to work gluten free, they look delicious, chunky and most of all cookie-like! Sounds like more flour and/or less butter would have helped. As you know mine also had flat cookie syndrome but I was too lazy to make another batch!
Thanks. We quite adored your version of this recipe. Something we might want to try in the future.
I think what you’ve done is amazing! Your cookies actually look like cookies, mine were so flat!
Thanks, Sanya. Our first batch was quite flat as well. It is when something is completely unsuccessful, that new inventions are born 😉