Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

I am in love. Serious love. The kind that inspires me to write blog posts and fantasize about my new love all hours of the day and night. Ahh...chocolate chip cookies. I hear you, you are thinking "Cookies? She's in love with chocolate chip cookies? What is the big deal?" Ah...let me explain. Hang in with me, it will all make more sense in a minute.

First you need to know I cannot eat any gluten. What's that? It's a protein found in wheat and other grains. That means no flour. No bread. No cake. No donuts. No cookies. Well...at least no bread, cake, donuts and cookies like I used to eat, back when I could have gluten. There are gluten free products on the market that use other flours (like potato, tapioca, rice and bean) to try to duplicate baked goods that have gluten. It takes about 5 minutes on a gluten free diet to figure out that they just aren't the same. The texture is often gritty and the taste isn't the same. The gluten free products are often really crumbly too. When I want a good cookie, a bite of crumbly sand is just not what I had in mind.

Recently Betty Crocker put out a new line of gluten free baked goods. You buy the mix and can make baked goods at home. I was a little skeptical but since they were offering a coupon for a free mix I decided to give it a try. (If you want a coupon for the free mix call General Mills at 1-800-446-1898 and select option #4 on the main menu.)

Now part of the fun of baking at home is licking the beaters. I tried this and was sorely disappointed. The dough was gritty and did not taste the way I remembered cookie dough. My heart sank but since the dough was mixed up and on a cookie sheet I slid it in the oven anyway. By the time I pulled the cookies out my expectations were pretty low. But being the optimist that I am I poured two glasses of milk, put some cookies on a plate and my friend and I both took bites of fresh-from-the-oven cookies. It was love at first bite. It must have been for my friend, who is also gluten free, because she looked at me and whispered conspiratorily, "Oh...our lives just got so much better!" Amazingly these cookies are good fresh from the oven and cold, another rarity for gluten free baking. And they taste like the Nestle Tollhouse cookies from my childhood. Ah, such bliss. Oh, and I haven't even told you the part I am the most excited about. I will actually get to bake cookies with my son. Cookies I can eat with him without getting sick and cookies he will want to eat too. I will be able to have those precious moments of baking with him as a child. I can't wait!