GF/DF Ultimate CC Cookies

Bake #20 for 2025: Gluten-Free Dairy-Free Brown "Butter" Toffee Chocolate Chip Cookies

These are our absolutely all-time most-favorite chocolate chip cookies. Hands down. Unfortunately, they're full of dairy and gluten so for a few of our friends, they're a no-go. While I've only barely dipped my toe in the "alternative baking" waters, I was determined to give it at least one good try. 

While I usually opt for the convenience of store-bought Heath toffee bits, I started by making homemade dairy-free toffee chips instead, using this recipe from Handle the Heat. (Tessa is one of my favorite go-to bakers for recipes and baking science btw.) Since the plant butter I used is both salted and "European style," I omitted the extra salt and followed Tessa's advice in the recipe about adding a Tbsp of water to the melting butter. It turned out beautifully! My only note would be to spread it out in a thinner layer while cooling next time since some of the middle bits stayed a little soft, and also possibly cook it just a few degrees higher. On their own, the toffee bits don't taste far off the dairy version.

For the cookie dough, the recipe requires browning butter. I was flying blind on how that might work with plant butter, so it was a bit improvised. It started to take on a slight amber tint, but just as I was going to try to snap a photo, the whole pan got very foamy so I quickly took it off the heat.

I used King Arthur Measure-for-Measure Gluten-Free Flour blend in exchange for both the all-purpose and bread flours the recipe calls for. Instead of chopped semisweet chocolate, I substituted and equal weight of Enjoy Life Dairy-Free Semi-Sweet Mini Chips. Typically, I prefer a blend of chocolate chunks and mini chips in these cookies, so if I do a DF version again, I'll see if I can find larger pieces. The rest of the recipe was followed exactly as written - and don't skip the flaky sea salt!

While mixing, the batter seemed fairly close to normal. And I allowed it a 24-hr cure overnight in the fridge, just like I do with the regular dough.

After portioning, baking, and salting, they set up really well! So far, they're getting rave reviews from friends with food restrictions and I'm thrilled to know that while this is a bit of a labor of love (& certainly more $ than regular cookies), it's a more than passable option to share. Naturally, we LOVE the original recipe too, but if you only need DF, just use the regular flours; if you only need GF, enjoy the brown butter. Still nice to know it works with both alternatives too!