Terrifying Gluten Free Cookies

About two years ago I discovered I was allergic to gluten, dairy and eggs which I refer to as my glairegg allergies. This past summer I've discovered that my six year old, Justin is allergic to these same things. Bummer.

I feel much more motivated to really stick to an allergen free diet. One of my biggest fears is that nothing will taste as good as the original dairy, gluten or egg filled variety. So, I sit paralyzed by my fear of funky tasting cookies. But, not today. Today is the day I got brave. I rolled up my sleeves, pulled out my 112 bags of Bob's Red mill gluten free something or other flours and began to mix. I consulted a handout I received from a class I took a few years ago about cooking with food allergies. I followed the chef's advice to see if I could, once and for all, put my fear behind me and enjoy good tasting gluten free chocolate chip cookies. Although, I didn't use the egg replacer just yet. Baby steps, people, baby steps.

I mixed up a batch of all purpose gluten free flour which includes 1 part brown rice flour, 1 part sorghum flour and 1 part tapioca flour. Then I followed my original chocolate chip cookie recipe substituting my flour for wheat flour and adding 1/4 tsp of xanthan gum for each cup of flour.

April's Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies
1 C shortening
1C sugar
1/2 C brown sugar
2 eggs
1tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
2 C GF flour mix
1/2 tsp xanthan gum
2 C chocolate chips

I mixed up my cookie dough and was hopeful. It looked good. I tasted it. And there was much rejoicing! Hooray! And then I baked my first batch. And they turned out looking like this...

This picture actually doesn't do them justice. They look totally lame in person.

You can't exactly eat it like a cookie. It's more like the crumbs of the cookie jar that you desperately try to suck down when all of the cookies are gone and you want more becaue it was a bad day. But, the good news is that they taste marvelous. So, I'm not giving up. I put the rest of the dough in an 8x8 and am trying my hand at cookie bars. We'll see how that ends up. I'm hopeful at least and no longer terrified. It was a good day of baking!