Salted Triple Chip Cookies, My New Favorite GF Flour Mixture, and a Gluten Free Cookie Swap

Salted Triple Chip Cookies are my favorite go to cookie to make.  I've been making them for about a year and I can promise you they are a huge hit wherever you bring them.  Or with yourself if you are sitting home eating them alone. No judgement over here, just know they make A LOT of cookies.  I originally got the recipe from my friend Mallory and instead of re-typing it, here is the link for you.  Seriously, make these.

The only thing you need to do to make these cookies gluten free is swap out the flour.  For a long time I used 3 cups of Bob's Red Mill All Purpose GF Flour and 1 and 1/4 cups rice flour.  This works, but I've been meaning to make the gluten free flour mixture suggested by the Gluten Free Girl for a year and I finally got around to it.  You need a food scale for this, and I realize that can be annoying, so don't worry about trying this yourself if you don't want to.  If you do want to, I mixed together 300 grams of millet flour, 300 grams of sorghum flour, 200 grams of sweet rice flour, and 200 grams of potato starch.  This makes a bit more than you need for the cookie recipe, so once it's combined just measure out 4 and 1/4 cups for the cookies.  I also used this mix to make corn bread and it worked really well in both recipes.  Shauna originally said to use 60% whole grains and 40% starches.  In an updated version she uses 70% whole grain and 30% starches.  I'll try this next time.  She also encourages you to play with different kinds of flours. See her post for more information.

I made these cookies for a gluten free cookie swap I went to last weekend.  The recipe really does make a lot of cookies so I also brought a dozen to a holiday party I had the night before and a dozen to a book club I had the next day.  Cookies for everyone!  Speaking of cookies for everyone, there were a whole lot of cookies at this gluten free cookie swap.  We had Jaffa Cakes from Candice, sugar cookies from Molly, and so many more.  There weren't even any duplicate cookies.  It was quite impressive really.  Mmm cookies.

A Year of Flour

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Last year for Christmas I asked for flour.  Lots of flour.  I was trying to find a flour blend that I liked and wanted to experiment with making my own.  There were recipes I wanted to try that called for several different flours and I didn't have any of them.  I also wanted to try all the different flours I was reading about to get a sense of the different flavors.  But, as many of you know, gluten free flour can be expensive.  Really expensive.  Especially when you want to try 15 different kinds.

So I put in an ask into Momma K for a box of goodies from Bob's Red Mill.  Included was almond flour, coconut flour, millet flour, amaranth flour, brown rice flour, buckwheat flour, quinoa flour, oat flour, teff flour, sorghum flour, sweet rice flour, potato starch, tapioca starch, and xanthan gum.  I also asked for a bag of Cup 4 Cup.

I set off baking and tried all of these flours in different variations.  The Cup 4 Cup was gone within a few days as it was the first thing I tried.  As I mentioned in my post, I liked it, but it is so expensive I wouldn't normally buy it for myself.

Many of the other flours are gone, but some are resting hardly touched in my refrigerator.  I enjoyed the sorghum, millet, and sweet rice flours the most.  I find the brown and white rice flours the the most versatile.  I tended not to use the starches or xanthan gum because I generally find them unnecessary.

I only flour I really did not like was the amaranth flour.  I only used a little bit of it in two different recipes and I did not like the taste it produced.  The quinoa flour also has a strong taste so I tend not to use that too much.  I haven't found many opportunities to use the buckwheat, teff, almond, oat, or coconut flour.  Who's got recipes for me?

I would like to try this mix from the Gluten Free Girl since I did like the flours she uses in her demonstration, but at the end of the day I'm kind of embarrassed to say that after all my research I still use Bob's Red Mill All Purpose GF Flour mixed with rice flour for most of my baking.  I found that I wasn't able to create anything as reliable and it seems to be more cost effective than continuing to buy several different kind of flours.

How about you?  What's your favorite GF flour mix?