Nobody Will Believe That These Are Gluten Free Or Vegan

It had been a long time since I tried baking anything with gluten free flour. I don’t think there was a measure for measure flour the last time I tried a recipe. All I knew was that it was tricky, the results weren’t great, and I didn’t need anything gluten free that badly. Last month I was making the cookies for some other photo shoots and needed to give most of them away. I got asked about the possibility of making some gluten free versions so I decided to give it a try again. I got some King Arthur Gluten Free Measure For Measure flour and started experimenting. My first attempt I tried making my The Vegan Chewy Chocolate Chip recipe swapping nothing but the flour. They came out okay, but they weren’t amazing or beautiful, they were just good homemade cookies. I tried using a bit less flour as that was the top suggestion that I found for using gluten free flour mixes. The cookies actually got a bit worse and the they showed signs of containing too much butter. It was time for a new approach with the ingredients to make gluten free cookies as amazing as they could be.

Aquafaba (Chickpea Water) As An Egg Replacement In Baking

Before I found how great unflavored protein powder as an egg replacement was, I tried all of the common plant based substitutes. I was familiar with using aquafaba, or the juice in a can of chickpeas, but I didn’t like it for a couple of reasons. I found that the cans from different brands would have variable viscosities that made for inconsistent baking results. Sometimes the aquafaba would have an overpowering smell also, I had one batch of brownies that was just too funky to enjoy and I gave up. Everything that I was reading about great vegan baking brought me back to the chick pea though, so I came back to the drawing board. I liked using protein powder for results, so I thought I’d try to just sub the banana and water for aquafaba and add some protein and see how it went. I also knew that I was working with gluten free flour that was prone to flattening more and not holding firm into a cookie. I whipped the white sugar with the aquafaba and a half teaspoon of xanthan gum until frothy hoping to compensate.

Ingredients And Process

I’ll be back later to add to this.