Gluten free or not, everyone has to have their favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe. Luckily, I found mine years ago when I was a relatively newly diagnosed Celiac. Someone from the support group I belonged to told me how easy it was to just use the regular old Nestle Tollhouse recipe but replace the regular flour with gluten free flour – the key being that they used The Gluten Free Pantry’s French Bread Mix as the flour. It was that simple! Cup for cup, just use the mix as your flour and change no other ingredients. It makes wonderful cookies and no one can tell the difference! I had been craving some cookies recently so I whipped up a batch, after I ate a quarter of the dough, of course!
Unfortunately, the first batch spread all over the pan and made very thin and crispy cookies. I prefer mine to be thicker. So I put the dough in the refrigerator and baked them later that evening. And they were much more to my liking. It’s not to say though that the thin and crispy ones didn’t taste good, because they disappeared as well, but I like my chocolate chip cookies to be more like the ones in the photo above.
As I have mentioned, I am not the best baker so I don’t know exactly why the cookies spread all over the pan. Any ideas? I used real butter and it was quite soft. Could that have been the issue? Fellow gluten free bakers, this novice welcomes your thoughts!
Beyond Rice and Tofu 
Super soft butter can definitely lead to flat cookies! :-D I actually just learned this from another blogger, Pat from “Gluten Free Food Even My Husband Likes.”
The butter provides the structure so you only want it to be just soft enough. What I do, is take the butter (Earth Balance in my case) and microwave at 50% power in 10 second increments. Basically, you want it soft enough to make beating it easier on you or your mixer.
Putting it back in the refrigerator was definitely the way to go. Also, I do not flatten my cookies at all. I try to keep them in a ball when they go in the oven, so the spreading is kept to a minimum.
You’re cookies look awesome though, in fact, now I want one. :-)
I’ve been trying to find a cookie that rivals Toll House and the Betty Crocker mix is close. i’m going to try your version-they look fabulous. And putting them in the fridge is the way to go. I used to do this with regular CC cookies.
Thanks for the advice, ladies! Looks like my instinct was right on. I always forget to let my butter sit out and soften and so I end up nuking it and probably did it too much this time.
Valerie – hope you try them. I think they are just like Toll House but it has been almost 15 years now since I tasted a ‘real’ one. But others have said they can’t tell the difference. I set them out one time without anyone seeing me do it and my family started eating them and then I went and asked my dad how he liked the gluten free cookies. He was surprised and said they tasted just like ‘real’ ones. That’s my test cause he thinks we eat funny at our house. :-)