Gluten-Free Vegan Cream Cheese Chocolate Chip Cookies with Muscovado and Fleur de Sel

It will probably take you about 2 seconds of scrolling through this blog of mine to see that I have zero problems with gluten. So why, you may ask, has there been a significant increase of gluten-free posts recently? The answer is simple, a good friend of mine is gluten intolerant and she's coming to my wedding, which means it's time to figure out how to make gluten-free, vegan desserts that don't taste like they were made out of sand! And lucky for you, dear reader, I will be posting about this fun learning process along the way.

For these cookies, I started with the recipe for the supposed "Best Chocolate Chunk Cookies You'll Ever Have," which Joanna Goddard posted on her blog, A Cup of Jo. However, as you'll see if you navigate on over to the original recipe, it's gluten-free, but not vegan. But since the only non-vegan ingredient was the egg, that was easy enough to substitute out with my tried and true egg substitute. Other than that little vegan modification, I stayed true to the recipe. In the end, they had a great flavor, but still had that crumbly, kind of grainy texture to them.

So I thought and I thought and then I saw Bake or Break's post for Cream Cheese Chocolate Chip Cookies and wondered if cream cheese might save my grainy gluten-free cookies.

So I tried it and...........it worked! I still think my non-gluten-free chocolate chip cookies are better, but these ones I would say are in about the 90th percentile of all chocolate chip cookies, which I think is pretty good, especially for gluten-free.

I might still play around with the proportions a bit to see if I can make them even better. Or I might just call this a win and advance into the gluten-free cakes. 

Gluten-Free Vegan Cream Cheese Chocolate Chip Cookies with Muscovado and Fleur de Sel

If you don't have any aversions to gluten, you can use 8 ounces of all-purpose wheat flour in place of the gluten-free flours.

Ingredients:
1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, at room temperature

4 ounces (1/3 cup) Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese

3/4 cup packed light muscovado sugar

1/4 cup natural cane sugar

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 egg's worth of egg substitute

1 3/4 cup brown rice flour

1/2 cup amaranth flour

1/4 cup tapioca starch

1/2 teaspoon fleur de sel, plus more for topping

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup chocolate chunks or chips

Directions:

In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine the butter, cream cheese, muscovado sugar, natural cane sugar and vanilla extract. Mix with the paddle attachment on medium speed for 2 minutes until light. Add the egg substitute and mix until combined.

In a small bowl, whisk together the brown rice flour, amaranth flour, tapioca starch, fleur de sel, and baking soda. Add the dry ingredients into the butter mixture and mix on medium speed until the dough comes together.

Add the chocolate chips and mix until thoroughly incorporated.

Scoop the dough onto a piece of parchment paper. With the help of the parchment, roll the dough into a log that is approximately 2 inches in diameter and 12 inches long. Wrap the log with the parchment and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

In the mean time, preheat the oven to 350F. Cut the log into 1/2-inch disks. Place them on ungreased baking sheets.

Sprinkle the tops  with a bit of fleur de sel. Bake for 10 to 11 minutes or until edges set and start to turn golden. They might look a bit underdone, but this is fine.

Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before trying to lift them.

Makes 2 dozen cookies.