Healthy Tasty Chowcleaner recipes, reviews, toddler mom stuff and food chatter

We all know Alton Brown is the man.  So, when I realized he had a gluten free chocolate chip cookie out there- I thought, “that’s the perfect recipe to tweak!”  I really set out to add some chopped hazelnuts to them but my hazelnuts were bad so I threw in some optional walnuts instead.  Hazelnuts would have been perfect with these though.  The cookies turned out great and I’m really excited to now use my base recipe and keep playing with it.  You can’t tell they’re gluten free and I like them better than the Betty Crocker mix - they’re not as dry and they don’t fall apart easily.   I sort of feel bad making something sugary on Halloween, but I’d rather eat these than candy.  I’m finally growing up!!!  Kind of…look below for some pictures from last night’s Halloween party at a friend’s house!

Ingredients: (recipe adapted from here)

• 2 sticks butter (I was going to experiment with applesauce but I’m out, I imagine less butter would have been fine - 6oz?)
• 1 1/2 cups brown rice flour
• 1/2 cup oat flour (make sure to buy gluten free oats for gluten free cookies)
• 1/4 cup cornstarch
• 2 TB arrowroot powder
• 1 tsp ground flax seed (for gumming agent reasons)
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 cup concentrated fruit juice blend
• 1 cup light brown sugar (used organic to make myself feel better that I’m using this much sugar)
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 12 oz chocolate chips (I only had minis this time)
• 2/3 cup chopped walnuts (optional, I’d rather have had hazelnuts)

Method:

• Pre-heat oven to 350
• Soften butter, then mix with sugars, eggs, and vanilla
• In a separate bowl, mix dry ingredients (except chocolate chips) with a fork
• Slowly mix dry into wet ingredients - add chocolate chips and nuts
• Chill at least 1/2 hour
• Line cookie sheet with parchment paper and by small cookie scoop full, drop batter on parchment paper- no need to press down, refrigerate unused dough while baking
• Bake 9-10 minutes or until edges turn golden brown - top will appear slighlty uncooked but remove, let sit 2 minutes and it will cook all the way through and stick together.
• Cool on wire rack
• Note: Alton had oven temp for his recipe at 375 - this cooked the edges too fast for my version so 350 works better.

On a side note…Happy Halloween!  Halloween parties are so much fun!  I think it would be nice to go to a costume party every few months.  At the party last night, I met some of the same people I met last year at the same party - however, I don’t remember any of them because nobody looks the same.  Everyone goes all out and it’s so fun to see the creativity.  As a girl, you have to get creative if you don’t want to be the “sexy” version of anything you can think of.  It’s practically impossible to find a costume that isn’t a sexy version!  I think men must be making all these clothes thinking women like it or something.  What do you think?   By the way, that’s my husband with me up there- it makes it so much more challenging to think of a “couple” costume.  Some great couples costumes from last night: Biggest loser before and after (husband padded with cotton wearing a wig and makeup as before), wife is after, Ghostbuster and Stay Puft Marshmallow, Octo Mom and Sperm Donor, Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio, and  Richard Simmons and Suzanne Somers.  Tonight, our little man is going to be a cowboy and say, “Tiii or Teeeee” to get his candy - I’m pretty excited to see how he does!  However, I’m hoping I can hide it from him after tonight but we’ll see how that goes.  Some of the candy out there is pure fakeness so I’m hoping to weed through it and throw most of it back in our bowl to hand out..  Shhhh.