Chewy Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies (from the Bookgeek Baker - that's me!)

Last night on an AMA on Reddit, a lovely user asked about my favorite gluten free recipe. One that even the gluten-eating people in my life like. I promised to share the recipe here because it's long and complicated. Not that making these cookies is complicated, but the typing of of recipes is.

So here's my recipe for Chewy Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Please note, this recipe is a tweaked version of this one here from My Gluten Free Kitchen. The original recipe comes with tons of amazing tips on perfect baking. Basically, my recipe is like the slacker version.

I'm just jazzed to eat some cookies with minimal disruption in my life. She lives to bake. I live to read (and eat baked goods). These are very different baking philosophies.

Ingredients

• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose gluten-free flour blend (I either use Bob’s Red Mill 1 for 1 GF Flour or make my own using brown rice flour, sorghum flour, potato starch, and arrowroot)
• 1/2 tsp. xanthan gum (omit if gf flour blend has xanthan or guar gum already)
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp. salt
• 2 ounces cream cheese, softened
• 3/4 cups unsalted butter, melted
• 1 cup coconut palm sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 2 egg yolks (room temp is best, but I don’t have patience for that so I usually just toss them in)
• 2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
• parchment paper

Directions

1. Mix together the dry ingredients (gf flour, xantham gum, baking soda, and salt) in a medium bowl.
2. If you have a fancy stand mixer, well goody for you. Grab that baby and get ready to go. Otherwise, I use a food processor with a dough blade. Or if I’m too lazy to properly clean that, I’ll just use a big bowl and some muscle. Whatever you pick, mix together the cream cheese, melted butter, and sugar. If you’ve got a mixer, turn it on and let it rip for 2 minutes. If you’re using the processor, you won’t need the full two minutes. If you’re doing it the old fashioned way, just try really hard to mix it all up super well.
3. Add the vanilla and egg yolks. Mix some more.
4. Add the flour mixture. Bust out your favorite muscle tee and get to mixing.
5. Add the chocolate chips. I won’t tell if you add more than the recipe recommends.
6. Cover and refrigerate the dough for about an hour to firm up. GF dough is notorious for being a bit runny. Be patient, Grasshopper. I promise we’ll get to the baking. Make a cup of coffee and grab a book! 
7. When it’s time to bake, preheat the oven to 375 degrees. You may need to let the dough sit on the counter for about 15 minutes to soften. Yes, I know I told you to let it harden, and why not just wait the 45 minutes instead of this wait an hour and then another 15 minutes, but whatever. It’s baking. And while bakers tell me it’s a science, I have no clue. Just know that the original recipe said to let the dough harden for four hours. Yeah. That was madness. It was like trying to scoop cement. I needed a jackhammer. 
8. Okay. Moving on. Scoop out the dough onto a cookie sheet lined with a silicone liner or parchment paper. See, this is why I put the parchment paper in the ingredients list. If you didn’t have it, you could have gone out during that hour and fifteen minutes we just talked about. Anyway, back to scooping. A long time ago I bought these scooper things from Pampered Chef. There’s tiny, medium, and big sizes. I use the medium for these cookies.
9. Bake the cookies for 10-15 minutes. I realize there’s a big difference between 10 and 15 minutes, but all ovens and pans are different. My oven runs super hot one day and cold the next, so it changes for me daily. Just start checking them around 11 minutes in to cooking. The edges should be firm and brown, but the middles will be soft. Don’t overbake them unless you like crunchy cookies (how are we friends if you like crunchy cookies?!).
10. Let the cookies cool on the cookie sheet for a few minutes before moving them to cooling racks.
11. Get some more coffee and your book and feast on your delicious gf cookies! Share them with your gluten eating friends or hoard them for yourself. I promise. I'm not judging.

There you go, dear AMA reader. Hope you enjoy your cookies (and your book).