I walk into the grocery store with my empty stomach rumbling as I pass all the bakery items. A fresh chocolate chip cookie might make this grocery store trip a little more pleasant. I mean you can’t shop on an empty stomach right? At the checkout aisle if I go famished and without a list, I don’t shop for dinners. When I shop hungry, I end up with chips, pasta, and ingredients for chocolate chip cookies in my cart.
If you committed a new goal to work out more and lose weight, don’t give up reading yet. I am not trying to sabotage your plan. It is always better to have a healthy alternative when you do have those sweet cravings down the road.
When you are avoiding gluten and processed sugar, finding a yummy chocolate chip cookie feels like a mission impossible task.
Chocolate chip cookies are like good friends that keep you company. They are there for you on the days you are celebrating, the hard days, and the exhausting days when you stayed up way too late watching Netflix.
“Happiness is baking cookies. Happiness is giving them away. And serving them, and eating them, talking about them, reading and writing about them, thinking about them, and sharing them with you.”
~ Maida Heatter, baker & author
The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies: Two options happen to be gluten-free
1. Capello’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough
Capello’s almond flour gluten-free chocolate chip cookie dough is in the freezer section in stores like Whole Foods and Natural Grocers. I like to eat it as raw cookie dough and no worries about salmonella. It is vegan. No eggs included in the ingredients.
You can’t think about the best chocolate chip cookies without remembering Phoebe from FRIENDS and her grandma’s famous cookie recipe.
The American History of the Chocolate Chip Cookie
According to Wikipedia, the intriguing history of the chocolate chip cookie started with American chef Ruth Graves Wakefield and her kitchen assistant Sue Brides in 1938:
In 1930, Wakefield and her husband bought a tourist lodge in Whitman in Plymouth County. Located about halfway between Boston and New Bedford, it was a place where passengers had historically paid a toll, changed horses, and ate home-cooked meals.
When the Wakefields opened their business, they named the establishment the Toll House Inn. Ruth cooked and served all the food and soon gained local fame for her lobster dinners and desserts.
She said, “We had been serving a thin butterscotch nut cookie with ice cream. Everybody seemed to love it, but I was trying to give them something different. So I came up with Toll House cookie.” She added chopped up bits from a Nestlé semi-sweet chocolate bar into a cookie.[The original recipe in Toll House Tried and True Recipes is called “Toll House Chocolate Crunch Cookies.” Wakefield gave Nestle the recipe for her cookies and was paid with a lifetime supply of chocolate from the company.
During WWII, soldiers from Massachusetts who were stationed overseas shared the cookies they received in care packages from back home with soldiers from other parts of the United States. Soon, hundreds of soldiers were writing home asking their families to send them some Toll House cookies, and Wakefield was soon inundated with letters from around the world requesting her recipe. Thus began the nationwide craze for the chocolate chip cookie.
The kitchen assistant’s daughter said in 2017 when interviewed by a reporter with NewsCenter 5, “All during the war, we sent them all over the world (to the troops). That was one of our jobs. People would order them – three dozen – but we always packed 40 in case any broke.”
| Original Toll House recipe | Current NESTLÉ® TOLL HOUSE® Recipe |
| 1 1/2 cups of shortening | 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened |
| 1 1/8 cups of sugar | 3/4 cup granulated sugar |
| 1 1/8 cups of brown sugar | 3/4 cup packed brown sugar |
| 3 eggs | 2 large eggs |
| 1 1/2 teaspoon of salt | 1 teaspoon salt |
| 3 1/8 cups of flour | 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour |
| 1 1/2 teaspoon of hot water | No water |
| 1 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda | 1 teaspoon baking soda |
| 1 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla | 1 teaspoon vanilla extract |
| Chocolate chips + walnuts | 2 cups chocolate chips + 1 cup chopped nuts |
| Bake at 350 degrees for 12-13 minutes | Bake at 375 degrees for 9 to 11 minutes |
2. Dreaming about the perfect fresh out of the oven crispy on the edges, but soft in the middle chocolate chip cookie? You have got to try…
King Arthur Gluten-free Cookie Mix
https://shop.kingarthurbaking.com/items/gluten-free-cookie-mix
These King Arthur gluten-free cookies taste better than the Nestle Tollhouse cookie store in the mall. Add eggs, chocolate chips with cane sugar, dairy-free earth balance soy-free butter, and my favorite walnuts.
Your family will not even realize they are gluten-free. They are that good!
