Gluten Free DoubleTree Chocolate Chip Cookies

The DoubleTree Hotel chain recently released their famous Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe.  Since I couldn't find regular flour at our grocery store, I decided to make  Gluten Free DoubleTree Chocolate Chip Cookies.  I'm not too much of a gluten free baker, so I wasn't sure how these cookies would turn out.  The gluten-free flour I purchased said you could replace regular flour with an equal amount of gluten-free flour.  So I heated up the oven and hoped for the best!

I knew the amount of butter in this recipe would be an issue with the cookies spreading.  Sometimes buttery cookies spread too much, even when using regular all-purpose flour.  To help the cookies retain their shape, I substituted one of the two half sticks of butter for vegetable shortening.  Also, If you're having trouble finding semi-sweet chips or just want to change up the recipe, butterscotch chips or salted caramel chips would be tasty substitutes.  Get the original DoubleTree Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe here.  

Since there are quite a few ingredients in these Gluten Free DoubleTree Chocolate Chip Cookies-two types of sugars, cinnamon, lemon juice, rolled oats, chocolate chips and chopped walnuts to name a few-I decided to get my daughter and husband in on the baking action. We lined a cookie sheet with parchment paper and got to work. When it came time to drop the batter onto the cookie sheet, my daughter and I were surprised to see the recipe called for 3 tablespoons of batter.  We made one batch with conservative scoops, filling half of an ice cream scooper.  My husband called us out for being too timid, and assembled a second baking sheet with heaping ice cream scoops of batter.  The challenge was on to see whose batter would outshine the other's!  

We turned the oven light on and watched the cookies begin to spread in the early stages.  As they continued to bake, my daughter's batch held a firm shape, but my husband's spread together.  As my daughter and I cheered and claimed victory, I came up with an idea to keep the cookies equally shaped.  After the cookies cooled for 10 minutes, we used the bottom of a tall drinking glass to make rounded shapes and a medium size heart cookie cutter to make heart shapes.  This was a fun way to get kids involved in the kitchen and make our cookies pretty and presentable.  Even if you use regular flour and spreading isn't an issue, it's still fun to make shapes with these Doubletree Chocolate Chip Cookies.  

Baking these cookies together taught us it's okay to alter the original plan.  Sometimes we have to step out of our comfort zone and try something new.  We're all making adjustments in our lives right now.  But the more we work together the better the outcome will be.