Gluten-free chocolate chip cookies recipe

These chunky oatmeal cookies are dotted with big chunks of chocolate for the perfect treat with your afternoon cuppa.

Gluten-free chocolate chip cookies can suffer from being too crumbly. Gluten normally helps to bind the ingredients together, but the secret ingredient here is the peanut butter. Together with the egg, it improves the texture of the cookies, so you should get a good bite to them without them falling apart. This recipe is so simple to make. It's really only four steps: mix, chill, shape and bake. It makes a batch of 20 cookies (or two batches of 10 if you freeze half the dough). And each biscuit is only 152 calories. If you don't need a gluten-free version, try our classic chocolate chip cookies instead.

Ingredients

• 100g butter, softened
• 60g crunchy peanut butter
• 100g light brown soft sugar
• 1 egg
• ½ tsp vanilla essence
• 200g medium oatmeal
• 50g gluten-free plain white flour
• ¼ tsp gluten free baking powder
• 100g dark or milk chocolate, cut into small chunks

Method

1. Cream the butter, peanut butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Mix in the egg and vanilla essence then the oatmeal, baking powder and chocolate chips. Chill the dough for 20 mins.
2. Divide the mixture onto two pieces of cling film. Shape two 15cm long logs. Chill in the fridge or freezer until firm.
3. Heat the oven to 200°C/400°F/Gas 6. Cut each cookie dough sausage into 1.5 cm thick disks. Space out on a couple of lined baking trays.
4. Bake in the oven for 8-10 mins until golden. Cool on the tray a little before transferring to a cooling rack.

Top tips for making gluten-free chocolate chip cookies

Cooling is essential with gluten-free cookies, to get the right texture and prevent them from spreading too much in the oven. Make sure to chill your dough thoroughly - at least two hours in the fridge, or pop it in the freezer if you don't have that long. After baking, allow the cookies to cool completely before serving.

Senior Food Writer Jessica Ransom recommends using the best quality peanut butter you can afford so that you limit additives and unnecessary sugars and sweeteners. She recommends ManiLife Deep Roast Crunchy Peanut Butter. You can add some extra peanuts to the top of these biscuits for added crunch if you like.

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