Baking At Home Gluten Free and Vegan Cookies

Baking Lovers,

I hope you’re all well and staying safe.

I also hope you’ve been having some fun during lockdown and have done some yummy baking! I’ve been cooking and baking up a storm. Remember, if you can’t find flour in shops near you, we are now stocking plain and self raising flour in our Wenzel’s stores! You can also order it by click & collect.

I realise a lot of the recipes. I have uploaded on here haven’t all been completely dietary needs-friendly; whilst you can adapt many of them to suit your needs, I think we should include some brilliant recipes that can be enjoyed by everyone. I’ve taken inspiration from one of my absolute FAVOURITE food bloggers. She blogs about recipes to suit pretty much every dietary requirement you can imagine, and she’s called The Loopy Whisk. Her recipes are amazing, so she’s well worth checking out.

Today, I’ve decided to post some yummy vegan chocolate chip cookies, and a gluten free option for those who want the sweet, chewy happiness without the things that you cannot eat.

Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies

You’ll need…

• 70 g caster or granulated sugar
• 120 g light brown sugar
• 220 g plain all-purpose flour
• 110 mL vegetable or sunflower oil
• 4 tbsp non-dairy milk (I like Almond milk for this recipe.)
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract or paste, whatever you can get your hands on.
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• pinch of salt
• 100 g dark chocolate chips or chunks – you can always chop up your favourite chocolate bar and use that.

To make the Vegan Cookies…

• Mix together the sugars and oil. It will look similar to a crumble mixture and be a little dry at this point. (Fun fact, if you stop now you have a great body scrub!)
• Add in your non-dairy milk and vanilla and mix well until fully combined.
• Sift in all of your dry ingredients. Mix together until it is fully combined and there are no traces of flour. It shouldn’t be too sticky to the touch.
• Stir in 80g of the chocolate, saving some for later.
• Preheat your oven to 355 °F/180 °C/ Gas 4. Whilst it is warming up, line a baking sheet with greaseproof baking paper. You can do two sheets if you’re worried the cookies will spread too much during baking.
• Use a tablespoon or ice cream scoop to make balls of your cookie dough. Place these an inch apart on the pre-lined baking sheet.
• Bake the cookies for 10 to 12 minutes. If you want crispier cookies, cook for longer, but this baking time ensures a fudgy-middle cookie
• Mid way through baking, take the cookies out and put some more chocolate on top. Return them to the oven to finish off their bake to glory.
• Take them out and put on a wire rack to cool, or don’t. Warm cookies are one of life’s simple pleasures (in my opinion).

Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

You’ll need…

• 100 g caster sugar
• 100 g light brown sugar
• 120 g hard margarine, melted, (if you don’t need dairy free you could use butter)
• 1 large egg
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 300 g gluten free plain flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 160 g mixed dark chocolate and milk chocolate chips, (dairy free if necessary)

To make your GF cookies…

• In a bowl, mix together both your light brown sugar and caster sugar with your melted hard margarine. Mix until it all comes together and is fully combined.
• Add your egg and vanilla extract to the bowl and continue to mix (with a wooden spoon) until combined.
• In a separate bowl, sieve your gluten free flour, bicarbonate of soda, salt and briefly mix.
• Add your flour combination to your original bowl and beat till combined. Make sure your mixing bowl is big as this is quite a lot of flour. It can be hard work and takes time to really combine it all, but it’ll form a perfect cookie dough.
• Throw in the chocolate chips and give them a good mix so they are evenly distributed throughout the cookie dough.
• Cover your mixing bowl with clingfilm and chill in the fridge for about 45 minutes (you can make the cookie dough ahead of time also and keep it in the fridge until you need it).
• Heat your oven to 338°F/170°C/Gas Mark 3 and prepare a couple of baking trays with non-stick baking paper.
• Remove your cookie dough from the fridge and roll your dough into balls (about the size of a golf ball) and place them on your trays. The cookies will spread a little so leave some gaps between them. For the best results, I would cook them in a couple of batches – more time to wait, but it’s so worth it.
• Put into the preheated oven for 15 minutes – they should have flattened out to look more like cookies and be a lovely golden colour.
• Remove from the oven and leave to cool on the baking tray.

Enjoy!

In the future, I would love to include some more dietary-needs-friendly recipes, and if you have any tasty treats you would like recipes for, let us know! Tell us on social media, show us your cookies and ideas for recipes. We would love to hear from you!

Hopefully the world outside will return to some form of normalcy soon, safely of course, and we will be able to do more of the things we love. In the meantime, if you have to go out, stay alert and stay safe; take care of yourself and others around you!

Love and best wishes,

Wenzels xo