Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

Since we're dealing with some food allergies in our family recently....I've been experimenting a little with different kinds of flour in baking.   I started out by making chocolate chip cookies a few weeks ago using rice flour.  Unfortunately......the results weren't good!  They tasted fine; however the crumbly factor was a huge problem. 

But.  I tried a little different recipe today and I got much better results.  Josh and I spent the morning making cookies together, and it was a lot of fun!  He was actually very good and cooperated through the whole thing, so minus him sneezing all over the tray of unbaked cookies.....we did great!

Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients:

2 1/4 C. rice flour

1 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1 C. butter, softened

3/4 C. sugar

3/4 C. brown sugar

2 tsp. vanilla

2 large eggs

3 T. applesauce

1 1/2 C. chocolate chips

Stir flour with baking soda and salt; set aside.  In large mixing bowl, beat butter, sugar, and brown sugar at medium speed until creamy.  Add vanilla, applesauce, and eggs, mixing well.  Gradually blend dry mixture into creamed mixture.  Stir in chocolate chips.  Drop by tablespoons onto an ungreased cookie sheet.  Bake at 375* for 9 - 11 minutes.

Although using butter GREATLY helped the cookies actually stay together, they are still prone to falling apart.  However, as I made tray after tray of these this morning, I found that if I left the cookies on the cookie sheet for about 20 minutes (or more!) after baking, they stayed together much better.  I think letting them cool down on the cookie sheet they were baked on helped them to kind of solidify.  They're still more fragile than "normal" cookies, but this recipe is outstanding for being gluten free.  :-)