I’m relieved to say there is a happy ending to my Apple Butter venture… :D
A very delicious ending.
Thanks for all your helpful comments yesterday! You sure know how to help a gal out. I loved reading everyone’s different methods for making apple butter.
After 4 more hours of slow cooking yesterday morning over medium heat (with the lid ajar), buttery apple bliss happened. The apple pieces all broke down and the sauce turned into a thick & dark butter, no post-blending required. I was a happy girl.
Five pounds of apples made about 1 & 1/4 cup of apple butter. Boy, does it ever cook down! Some of you mentioned that not adding a lot of sugar (I used 1/3 cup Sucanat as opposed to 4 cups white sugar) might prolong the cooking process, so maybe that’s why it took longer for me. It took about 19-20 hours in total.
If I thought I loved store-bought apple butter (Eden Organic has a great no sugar added one), homemade is a gazillion times better! I want to test it one more time before I post the recipe for you guys. I think we might go apple picking this week, so it will be a good opportunity to test it out again! I also want to make peach and pear butter too. I’m hooked. :)
Speaking of testing, I was on a mission to make vegan and gluten-free chocolate chip cookies to bring with us while we visit family this week. I adapted my Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe and tried out a few different gluten-free flours. I didn’t want to use any weird gums or other ingredients, but keep it as simple as possible.
I made 3 trials:
Trial #1:
I used 1 cup of brown teff flour and 1 cup of Bob’s Red Mill almond flour (everything else in my recipe was the same)
No dice. The teff flour gave them a gross sand-like and gritty texture! I have not had much success when using teff flour at all. There is nothing worse than a gritty texture in gluten-free baked goods.
Trial #2:
I used 1 & 1/4 cup Bob’s Red Mill almond flour and 1 cup gluten-free oat flour (I simply processed certified gluten-free oats in my Vitamix until a flour-like consistency)
These are the ‘picture-perfect’ cookie with a great thickness too! The taste was a million times better than using teff flour. The almond flour gave them a very prominent nutty and buttery taste that we all loved. However, I felt that the almond flour was a bit too pronounced in this cookie (over-powering the sweetness) and wanted to reduce the amount slightly.
Trial 3:
…made a classic thin & crisp cookie with a ton of chew.
I used 1 cup Bob’s Red Mill almond flour and 1 cup gluten-free oat flour.
By just reducing the almond flour by 1/4 cup, the cookie was much thinner, crisp, and chewy.
While I generally love a thicker cookie, these were by far everyone’s favourite! By reducing the almond flour, the sweetness was able to come through much more. We also loved how crisp and chewy they are.
The winning cookie profile:
- crisp yet chewy
- Nutty and strong buttery flavour (thank you almond flour)
- sweet, but not over-powering
- slight ‘taffy’ feel to them from the nut flour
- addicting!
- What they are not: Soft & doughy
Let’s review:
I’m guessing if you wanted a thicker cookie with the sweeter taste of the winning cookie, you could add a couple more tablespoons of almond flour along with a couple tablespoons of additional sugar. I also want to test these again using Sucanat sugar as a sweetener.
Vegan and Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies
Yield
18-20 cookies
Prep time
Rest time
10 minutes
Cook time
Total time
Thin, crisp, and chewy. While these aren't your typical soft and doughy cookies, we loved them anyways. The almond flour gives them a taffy/chewy texture and it was hard to eat just one. The cookies firmed up quite a bit by the next day, so I would suggest cooking them a bit less than 12 mins (which was what I did). Adapted from my Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies.
Ingredients
- 7 tbsp Earth Balance + 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 1/2 cup packed brown sugar (I used organic)
- 1/4 cup organic cane sugar (or use white sugar)
- 1 flax egg: (1 tbsp ground flax mixed with 3 tbsp water)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp kosher salt
- 1 cup gluten-free oat flour (I processed 1 cup certified gf rolled oats into flour)
- 1 cup Bob’s Red Mill Almond Flour (add 2 tbsp Bob’s Red Mill Almond Flour if you want a thicker cookie)
- 1/4 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 cup dark chocolate chips
Directions
- Preheat oven to 350°F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. In a small bowl, mix together the flax egg and set aside.
- With an electric mixer or in a stand mixer, beat the Earth Balance and oil until fluffy. Add the sugars and beat for 1-2 minutes until creamy. Beat in the flax egg and vanilla extract.
- Beat in the remaining ingredients and fold in the chocolate chips.
- With wet fingers, shape balls of dough and place on the baking sheet. The dough will be very sticky but don’t worry! No need to flatten the balls down! Bake for about 10-11 minutes until slightly golden along edges. Allow to cool for 5-10 mins. on the baking sheet and then transfer to a cooling rack for another 10 minutes.
By the way, I also called Earth Balance and they told me that all of their products are gluten-free. Nice!
Have a great Friday cookie monsters!
Hi, Thank you for this recipe. Trying them out for my holiday baking gifts. I’ve never attempted vegan baking and had a couple questions- Does the Earth Balance need to be at room temp before mixing? Can I double this recipe and keep the taste & consistency of the cookie? Thanks again!
well, i don’t know what i did wrong, but my cookies didn’t turn out anything like the ones pictured. something must have been off. they were really oily and so thin they never set properly. pretty disappointed. oh well.
So i made them and they were/are incredible! this is the first comment ive ever made on here but oh my gosh!
I did change out the olive oil for coconut oil, and i didnt have measuring spoons so i guessed on the salt/baking soda step and also i beat the sugar and butter together and then added the oil instead of oil and butter.
Mine actually came out very soft and chewy it tastes no different from regular cookies in texture, but actual taste? soo much better. they taste better than they look also which idk how that is possible.
I’m a 15 yr old vegan who sucks at baking, so if i can do this so can you, its fool proof.
Hi Angela,
I am allergic to tree nuts. But I have been looking for a low sugar, vegan, tree nut free and gluten free choc chip cookie recipe! So tough. Any replacement for the almond flour? Also, is there a solution to keep the sugar to a minimum? What do you suggest?
been dying to find a recipe I can use, let me know! Thanks so much.
Also, what is the reason for olive oil? Can I sub avocado oil or coconut oil?
Hi,
First of all I LOVE this recipe and am so grateful to have found it! The only problem is that I find 18-24 cookies to not be enough! I doubled the recipe once and just doubled all measurements, and it turned out ok. I also use almond meal because it’s cheaper than the almond flour and it works just fine.
So, 2 questions: if I triple it, will it be ok to triple measurements and is there anything else I can I use besides Earth balance with is almost $5 a container?
Thank you !
I am so so so upset :( and disappointed. I absolutely love cookies and I’ve started a vegan diet a while back and I really needed a good recipe but, where I live we don’t have any vegan butter. So I substituted the butter with coconut oil and the cookies completely failed. They looked okay & I thought they were fine but I put them in the oven for 8 minutes and they’re flat and square and stuck to each other. What else could I use instead of butter? I don’r know what to do. I want cookies, I love cookies but they completely failed!
How did yours turn out so flat? Mine ended up chunky and thick :( I really wanted them flattened. Maybe I need to press mine flat
Angela, these are one of the BEST cookies I’ve ever had, gluten free or not! They’re nutty, chewy, toasty–an entirely new and dreamy cookie experience. Love the earthiness. Perfection. Thank you so much for sharing. Much love from New Zealand!
Oh my word…these are so good! I am baking them now and can’t stop from eating the dough. Thanks for all your work on recipes.
I just ate one of these, and it tasted more like the chocolate chip cookies I remember from when I was a kid than just about any other vegan incarnation I’ve ever made or had. I LOVE the tiny touch of cinnamon and the chewiness/nuttiness from the almond flour.
Thank you times a million for these. I’ve been dealing with a potential wheat allergy but also craving chocolate chip cookies, and these hit the spot. I rarely eat dessert, so these were an especially nice treat!
These cookies are fantastic! I made the recipe as is. Even my picky 11-year old approved them! Now that they’ve been approved, I’m making a batch for a teacher appreciation meal.
This has become my go-to chocolate chip cookie recipe. Amazing! No one, and I mean no one misses the eggs, butter or gluten. I work with and write with a bunch of non-sensitive and carnivorous people and they don’t even question the ingredients. Brava!
What is earths balance? They look really yummy
My partner is recovering from oral surgery and I’m on an elimination diet — between the two of us, our snack options are so limited that we almost wept in Trader Joe’s last night. I came to your blog hoping to find a treat we could both enjoy, and you didn’t disappoint! These cookies were fantastic and completely turned our night around. Thank you for giving us a delicious snack to enjoy together!
Oh, I’m so happy you found this recipe (at just the right moment, it sounds like!)! Sending you both all the best and well wishes. :)