These gluten free chocolate chip cookies are everything from your childhood memories – they’re crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside, and have the perfect chocolate chip to cookie ratio. You’ll want to make these again and again!
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Y’all, these gluten free chocolate chip cookies are the REAL DEAL. These Paleo Dark Chocolate Chip Walnut Cookies have been a long-time personal and reader favorite, but for this round of cookie development, we wanted to go with a more classic-style gluten free chocolate chip cookie. You know, like the ones on the back of the Nestle Tollhouse chocolate chip package that you used to bake up with your family and eat straight from the oven? Yeah, that’s what we’re talking about here!
What’s the secret to chewy gluten free chocolate chip cookies?
These cookies come together with our favorite gluten free flour blend, good old-fashioned butter, a mix of white and brown sugar (though we’ve also used coconut sugar with great results), a little vanilla, sea salt, and semi-sweet chocolate chips. After you mix up the dough, the key is to chill it for at least an hour (up to overnight) before baking. This helps solidify the butter, which will keep the cookies from spreading when they bake, which means you’ll wind up with a crisp crust on the outside, and a soft, chewy center.
Recipe Ingredients
The ingredient list is quite simple! Here’s everything you’ll need:
- Gluten Free Flour – to start, you’ll need 2 1/3 cups (289 g) of King Arthur’s Measure for Measure gluten free flour blend. We don’t recommend subbing for another blend, or the cookies will likely spread.
- Baking Soda – 1 teaspoon of baking soda heads into the dry ingredient mix as well.
- Sea Salt – as with ANY good cookie recipe, this one calls for 1 teaspoon of coarse sea salt (or a 1/2 teaspoon of fine salt).
- Butter – you’ll also need to grab 1 cup (2 sticks) of butter. Be sure to let it soften at room temperature for a while before adding it to the mix. If you don’t have a lot of time (or you forgot to set your butter out earlier in the day), check out our guide on how to soften your butter QUICK!
- Brown Sugar – 3/4 of a cup (144 g) of brown sugar gets creamed with the butter. Coconut sugar works here too, but brown sugar makes for (in my opinion) the tastiest, best textured option!
- White Sugar – 3/4 of a cup (144 g) of white sugar combines with the brown sugar and butter to create the most delicious creamed combination ever.
- Vanilla Extract – what’s a good cookie without vanilla extract?! You’ll need 2 teaspoons here!
- Eggs – 2 eggs help to bind everything together.
- Dark Chocolate Chips – 2 cups of dark chocolate chips head into the mix right at the end — this is the perfect amount for an uber chocolatey cookie!
How to Make
Below, you’ll find a step-by-step how-to that will walk you through making the most delicious GF chocolate chip cookies ever.
- Prep – preheat the oven to 350°F and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.
- Combine the dry ingredients – in a medium-sized bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt, then set aside.
- Cream the butter and sugar – add the butter and sugar to a large bowl, or the bowl of your stand mixer, and mix with an electric mixer for about 1 minute, until fluffy. Add the vanilla and eggs to the butter mixture and beat again, until fully combined.
- Add the dry ingredients to the wet, then add the chocolate chips – add the flour mixture to the butter mixture 1/2 cup at a time, until the flour is fully incorporated into the dough. Stir in the chocolate chips, then cover the dough and refrigerate for at least one hour, up to overnight.
- Scoop and bake – scoop the dough into 1-inch balls and place 12 balls of dough on the cookie sheet. Bake for 11-15 minutes, until the tops of the cookies are browned and crisp. Repeat this step until all cookies have baked.
- Let cool and enjoy!
Video
Frequently Asked Questions
King Arthur’s Measure for Measure flour, hands down. In fact, this blend works SO WELL that we actually don’t recommend straying from it at all. Other blends we’ve tried lead to a spread-out, less-than-chewy cookie.
They can! In fact, we tested a TON of different egg substitutes in several different baked goods, took all kinds of notes, and then laid it all out for you in this super helpful guide to egg-free baking. For cookies, we recommend using Bob’s Red Mill Egg Replacer – this egg substitute resulted in cookies that were chewy (but still with a nice crunch), perfectly crisp on the outside, and had an *almost* candy-like quality.
These babies bake for 11-15 minutes, so no longer than the average chocolate chip cookie!
First of all, the use of brown sugar here really helps to moisten the cookie. Brown sugar contains more moisture, resulting in a chewier, moister cookie. Also, it’s important to remember that baking is a science, so being really exact about measurements will help to yield the best end product also!
There was a lot of testing done with these cookies. The more spread-out cookies were those that were either made with a different flour (NOT King Arthur’s Measure for Measure), OR weren’t allowed to chill in the fridge for at least an hour ahead of baking.
When it comes to gluten free cookie-making, I’ve found that there’s usually 2 problems: hard, overly-crisp cookies and crumbly cookies. There’s a time and a place for crispy cookies, but freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies is not it! In the other direction, you get crumbly cookies (These are the ones that come out of the oven looking oh-so-promising until you pick them up and then, poof! Pile of crumbs.) If you, like us, have tried multiple gluten free chocolate chip cookie recipes only to have them turn out like the above, I can assure you that that will not be the case with these cookies! The real solution here is in the specific ratio of ingredients — Amber struck the balance between wet ingredients and dry (and all of the other nuances in baking ingredients) to create a perfectly NOT-crumbly cookie!
More Favorite Cookie Recipes
GF Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ingredients
- 2 1/3 cups (289 g) King Arthur Measure for Measure gluten free flour blend (do not sub for a different blend, or the cookies will likely spread)
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon coarse sea salt or 1/2 teaspoon fine salt
- 1 cup butter 2 sticks, softened
- 3/4 cup (144 g) brown sugar*
- 3/4 cup (144 g) white sugar
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 2 eggs
- 2 cups dark chocolate chips
Instructions
- In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt, then set aside.
- Add the butter and sugar to a large bowl, or the bowl of your stand mixer, and mix with an electric mixer for about 1 minute, until fluffy. Add the vanilla and eggs to the butter mixture and beat again, until fully combined.
- Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture 1/2 cup at a time, until the flour is fully incorporated into the dough. Stir in the chocolate chips, then cover the dough and refrigerate for at least one hour, up to overnight.
- Preheat the oven to 350 F and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.
- Scoop the dough into 1-inch balls and place 12 balls of dough on the cookie sheet. Bake for 11-15 minutes, until the tops of the cookies are browned and crisp. Repeat this step until all cookies have baked.
- Let the cookies cool, then enjoy!
Recipe Notes
- After testing this cookie multiple times and from reader feedback, we can only recommend using King Arthur Measure for Measure flour in this recipe. Starchier flours, like Cup4Cup will cause the cookies to spread too much.
- You may use coconut sugar in place of the white and brown sugar in this recipe, the cookies will be slightly less crisp on the outside.
Nutrition
I’ve tried a decent number of GF cookie recipes with (typically) sun-par results… not the case here! This recipe is IT – and I’m grateful to have found the King Arthur 1:1 gf flour. A fantastic recipe.
I unintentionally didn’t have baking soda on hand, so I used 2.25 tsp baking powder, and they were still great. Got a decent rise.
These are my fave GF cookies! So chewy and yummy. I scoop all the dough and freeze half the scoops on a cookie sheet then transfer to a freezer bag. That way I can just grab as many or as little as I want to bake up.
That’s such a great idea — thanks for sharing!!
These cookies are so good! We made a bunch fresh and froze what was leftover for later. My first time making gf cookies from scratch since I was diagnosed a few years ago. Thanks so much!
You’re so welcome, Chelsea! We are so glad that y’all enjoyed them!
I’ve made these twice now and they’re the real deal! My GF friends are thrilled to have such a yummy classic cookie recipe. I followed the directions exactly and they turned out great. I refrigerated my dough overnight the first time, and the second time actually had it in the fridge for a couple of days before scooping into big balls, dusting with flaky salt, and freezing the dough. Then I just baked a few cookies at a time straight from the freezer. It’s my favorite way to do cookies, and I think you minimize the spread when you get a good sit in the fridge and bake from frozen. But I also had no spread with the first batch, that just had an overnight sit in the fridge! I usually pull my cookies out on the early end of suggested times, but I found that these cookies did better when I got them fairly golden before taking them out, they were a bit limp with a shorter cooking time. Even with the slightly longer bake, they still were yummy and chewy when they cooled, so I’d air on the longer cooking time. Great recipe! Thanks, Amber and the f&f team!
Amazing! We’re so glad you love these, Sarah. Thank you for the tips!!