How to Make a Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Skillet Cookie

A gluten-free lifestyle seems like a major sacrifice when it becomes clear that you can no longer enjoy Chocolate Chip Cookies. There are many options available for store bought gluten-free cookies. None of these options can compare to a homemade cookie, hot out of the oven. Through some trial and error, I devised a gluten-free cookie recipe still considered to be a work in progress, but delivering a very consistent, hot out of the oven cookie.

In experimenting with chocolate chip cookies, I stumbled across the notion of skillet cookies. The idea appealed to me as my love affair with cast iron mandates that I cook almost everything we eat in a cast iron skillet. The transition to the skillet method was simple; and, I suggest trying this variation. If you do not have a cast iron skillet, I recommend getting one (recipe makes great standard cookies as well).

Ingredients are as follows:

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup sugar (we use evaporated cane juice and I can not testify to the exact quantity required if you are using white sugar)

1 1/2 sticks of butter (we prefer real butter as opposed to the fake, near plastic margarine choices)

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp baking soda

pinch of salt

2 cups of white sorghum flour

6-12 ounces of your favorite chocolate chips (I used about 6 ounces or half a bag)

Chocolate Chip choice is worth mentioning as the quality of the chocolate chip determines the entire outcome for a chocolate chip cookie. My family prefers a dark chocolate chip (at least 60% cacao) and it is a better health choice as well. I also believe that chunks or larger chips (sometimes referred to as drops) make the best cookies. This is due to the way they melt when baked and the resulting chocolate to cookie ratio.

Begin by softening the butter in a large mixing bowl. This can be as simple as laying the butter out in advance of baking. I often place my mixing bowl with butter in an unheated oven with the oven light on (the light bulb gets warm enough to soften the butter while I am working on other projects in the kitchen)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Add both sugars to the softened butter and stir with a fork until soft and almost creamy.

Add egg and vanilla and stir more.

Stir in salt and soda

Add 2 cups of sorghum flour and stir till a stiff cookie dough forms. Add flour till the dough gets stiff and is no longer wet (usually slightly less than two cups of flour).

Stir in chocolate chips (optional nuts, etc)

Heat a skillet on the stove with approx 1 Tbsp of butter until butter melts.

Add cookie dough to hot buttered skillet and watch it sizzle. The dough will need to be spread out some but will pretty much take care of itself once it gets into the hot oven.

Place skillet in preheated oven. Make sure to put a cookie sheet on a lower oven rack to catch anything that bakes over.

Note on skillet choice: I use a flat, 12", Lodge brand, griddle-style skillet. It works great for chocolate chip cookies, omelets, pancakes, eggs, and other general frying. A deeper, more standard, frying pan would also work great. However, cooking time may vary depending on the thickness of the cookie in the pan.

Note on cast iron in general: I cook most of our food in cast iron for several reasons. I prefer the way it cooks food and it is really easy to clean up (maybe I will write my next hub on how to clean a skillet). Also, there has been some correlation between a rising occurance of anemia and the introduction of non-stick cookware that caused a decline in the use of cast iron cookware (this statement has not been fact-checked for scientific accuracy but I did read it somewhere).

Bake for 15-20 minutes. Remove when total surface area begins to look brown. The middle may still be soft and jiggly, but that is OK, as it will continue to cook for some time in the hot skillet. Place hot skillet and cookie somewhere safe to cool. It will be hard to wait till it is cool enough to eat, due to the gooey deliciousness, but try. This cookie usually gets eaten far quicker than a batch of standard cookies made with the same amount of dough.

Skillet cookie is great with ice cream.

If you are making standard cookies, spoon onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper, which makes clean up really easy and avoids any losses due to stuck cookies. Bake for 8-11 minutes. Makes about three dozen cookies.

Enjoy!