Gluten free cookies for Susi et. al

Hi all: This is Linda & no Cath, the cookies you had were the chocolate chunk with peppermint. Susi has wheat allergy issues & mentioned one day how she always felt left out at the end of a race, in that she could not eat the cookies being given to the athletes unless she wanted to be in pain & worshiping the porcelain god big time. So I went on the web to find a gluten free cookie recipe & made her a batch for her next race. Since then I've made her cookies on several occasions & today I actually measured quantities, because Susi wanted the recipe so when she moves to B.C. she can have cookies any time. For those who don't know, I tend to be the kind of cook who plays with her food, so recipes tend to be modified on the fly & I tend to be visual - if it looks right, it will work so measurements are not my normal modus operandi. Anyway, we wrote down quantities & for Susi (& anyone else who wants) here is today's recipe for gluten free cookies.


Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Cream together 1/2 cup unsalted butter, 1/2 cup brown sugar (I like demerara), 1/2 cup white sugar (I like extra fine berry sugar), 1 tsp. vanilla, 1 egg, 1/2 tsp. salt, 1/2 tsp. baking powder & 1/2 tsp. baking soda. Mix in 1 tbsp. powdered (dry) ginger & 1 tbsp. minced fresh ginger (you can buy ginger already minced from most stores, look in the asian food section). At this point, I add any combination of fruit/nuts/chocolate that I feel like combining & happen to have on hand. Today I added 1/2 cup dried blueberries, 1/2 cup pecans & 1/2 dark chocolate chunks (we buy Bernard Callebeaut dark chocolate chunks from Real Canadian Superstore - you can also get milk chocolate & white chocolate from there). Now, if this was the NON gluten free recipe, I would put in 1 cup large flake rolled oats & 1 cup of flour, standard wheat variety most people use. But since Susi can't have wheat, today I put in 1 & 1/2 cups large oat flakes & 1 & 1/2 cups chestnut flour (I found this at an Italian supply shop & never having used it before, was eager to see how it worked). In previous recipes baked for Susi I used potato flour. The trick to remember is, if your mix is too 'wet' your cookies will spread out when baking & you will be cursing & prying flat cookie tortillas (that break into tiny bits as you pry) off your cookie sheets. Edible crumbs perhaps, but not much fun to clean up. Plus because they spread out, they also tend to burn so maybe not that edible, either. 


So, once you have a mix that is not too wet, you drop spoonfuls of batter on your cookie sheets. I don't grease my sheets but people can if they want to. I pop the sheets in the preheated 350 degree oven for 12 minutes (note: altitude makes a difference as does atmosphere - Calgary is high & dry, so you may have to adjust cooking time depending on where you live). As Susi can testify, today's cookies came out just fine, they were very soft when first they came out so I let them cool about 2 minutes before I slipped a spatula under the cookies to loosen them from the sheets. Because of the chocolate chunks, I find that if I let the cookies cool too long they tend to stick to the sheets, but greasing the sheets may prevent this from happening. Susi & Keith test drove the finished product & Susi ordered Keith to step away from the cookies & mentioned her black belt in martial arts, so I am confident that the cookies were acceptable.  


Cath, if you want to make the chocolate chunk with peppermint just use the non-gluten free version of the mix, I would not put in blueberries but pretty much any kind of nut can be used. Also, make sure you do not put in vanilla but only put in peppermint - if you mix vanilla & peppermint flavours you tend to get an odd taste as the flavours clash. Enjoy!