Hello internet friends!  I apologize for the radio silence as of late – as always, real life has a nasty habit of getting in the way. My workload at Real Work has tripled (tripled!) in the last week so I haven’t had as much time to be testing concoctions in the galley. Last night I had a brief (one hour) break in between Things That Needed Doing, and decided to try out my Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies GF style for a gathering at my friend’s apartment.  This recipe was very easy to convert with the 1:1 flour, as all of the other ingredients are gluten-free to begin with. 

Things…did not go as planned. 

Imagine my surprise when I took them out of the oven and they looked like this  

 
What in tarnation are those?! Where are my delightful pillows of chocolatey goodness!? 

 

 
It turns out, when you’re experimenting with GF baking – even with a 1:1 substitution flour – it does not mean “exact replication guaranteed”.  Don’t get me wrong, they were absolutely delicious! Given a hearty seal of approval by my two gluten-free test subjects, including one who said it was even better than a traditional cookie because it was so thin and crispy while still having chew and a delicious chocolatey buttery flavor.  It just made me realize that even though science has made it easier to bake GF, it hasn’t made it an exact process. There is so much that can be tweaked to replicate a “normal” baked good – more flour, extra binders, shorter cooking time, less mixing – that I think all GF recipes should be approached with a very open mind.  Baking is just tasty chemistry, after all, and some experiments lead to fantastic happy accidents. 

So there you have it! Just because it doesn’t look like what you envisioned, doesn’t mean it’s bad. To quote the great philosopher Ms. Frizzle, “take chances! Make mistakes! Get messy!”, and if any of you readers out there have GF tips please feel to share them :). 

Good baking to all, and to all a good bake!