When we visited Berkeley a few years back we were told to take the FREE one hour Scharffen Berger Chocolate Factory Tour, so we did. The tour gave and informative overview of chocolate and the chocolate making process, plus free chocolate tastings … the best part! As you may expect, before leaving we decided to buy some chocolates to bring home 🙂 In their retail store there were also chocolate recipe books. There I found the book Cocolat: Extraordinary Chocolate Desserts by Alice Medrich which was highly recommended to me by a good friend from California. Alice Medrich is a pastry chef, teacher, and founder of Chocolat, a chain of chocolate stores (now closed!), where her American style chocolate truffles were first sold.
During the time I found Alice’s book I had a home-base food business. After making Alice’s chocolate truffle recipe I decided to add this dark chocolate artisan truffles to the list of home-made products (pesto sauce, fresh pasta, and seasonal desserts). The chocolate truffles were a success; unfortunately, I had to stop making them because tempering the chocolate in the Florida heat and with the high humidity was too tricky to accomplish consistently.
For the past year, since I found out that I’m gluten intolerant, I have been challenged when preparing desserts since most of the recipes I know use flours with gluten. There are a few food blogs that I’ve subscribed to because they inspire me with their amazing pictures, recipes and stories; David Lebovitz’s is one of them. On David’s March 6, 2015 blog entry he mentioned Alice’s new book Flavor Flours: A New Way to Bake with Teff, Buckwheat, Sorghum, Other Whole & Ancient Grains, Nuts & Non-Wheat Flours and how she was able to use non-wheat flours to create baked goods that came close to the flavor and texture of the gluten filled originals. After spending over an hour at our local bookstore browsing through the recipes and tasting each and every recipe in my mind, I decided to buy it.
Flavor Flours is an excellent book not only for those on a gluten free diet but also for the adventurous who is willing to try not so common grain and non-wheat flours. The recipes are all simple classics: layer cakes, tarts, muffins, cookies, crackers, all doable by home bakers. I have already bookmarked a few other recipes that I want to try and share with our son when he comes next time from college.
The oat and brown rice flours in this recipe give these gluten free chocolate chip cookies a rich, butterscotch flavor and a lovely texture with a perfect combination of crisp exterior and soft, cake like interior. These cookies became an instant a hit both at home and my husband’s work! With these gluten free chocolate chip cookies and many of the other recipes in this book you will definitely get the gluten free compliment – I cannot believe it’s gluten free!
- 1¼ cups (135 grams) oat flour
- 1 cup (125 grams) brown rice flour
- ¼ cup plus 2 tablespoons (65 grams) potato starch
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ¾ teaspoon xanthan gum
- ½ pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter softened
- ¾ cup (150 grams) packed dark brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 large eggs
- 1¼ cups (200 grams) 60% bittersweet chocolate chips (Ghirardelli)
- 2 tablespoons cacao nibs (optional)
- Preheat the oven to 375 ˚F.
- In a bowl combine the all the flours, potato starch, salt, baking soda, and xanthan gum and whisk together.
- In mixer cream the butter and the sugar using a whisk attachment.
- Add the vanilla and one egg at a time.
- Pour the flour mixture in small batches.
- Mix in the chocolate chips and cacao nibs.
- On a lined or greased baking sheet, using an ice cream scooper, scoop the cookie dough and place them 2" apart.
- Bake for 11-13 minutes or until it has your desire consistency of crunchiness.
- Rotate the pans from top to bottom and from front to back halfway through the baking time.
- Cool the cookies completely before storing.
- Cookies can be stored at room temperature for up to five days in an airtight container. The dough can be refrigerated for up to one week or frozen for one or two months.
This recipe has been modified from the original: reduced the amount of the sugars to ½ instead of ¾ cup, used Demerara sugar instead of granulated sugar, reduced the amount of chocolate chips to 1¼ cups instead of 2 cups. The nibs could be substituted by nuts.
Did you make this recipe?
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