Gluten-free has become a health-protocol for a lot of people. Some because they have serious digestive issues and/or celiac, and others because they want to take a break from the onslaught of gluten in their diet to see if various health issues will improve along with immune system function. This cookie would qualify as gluten-free, but not dairy or egg free.

However, I think (and this is coming from someone who must exclude a lot of things from her diet due to a histamine malfunction called Mast Cell Activation Syndrome—so I know whereof I speak) we can focus on what is not included in a recipe or dish, rather than what is included. And what is there is much more fun than what isn’t there. Abundance mentality vs. deprivation mentality.

This recipe, which I will link here < Almond Flour Chocolate Chip COOKIE RECIPE > and below, is on the All Recipes website, which is where I found it seven years ago. At our house, we affectionately call it the ‘Chips Ahoy!’ cookie because it has a similar texture and flavor to that well-known cookie product.

Almond flour works well in certain recipes and not so in others. This can be said of most non-gluten flours. They all have their best uses. It’s worth a little investigation and typing up a little cheat-sheet to remind you which ones are best for what purpose.

Almond flour, in this recipe, is a good substitute and produces a nice sturdy, chewy texture that sets off the flavor of the chocolate delightfully.

Now, I’m an inveterate recipe tweaker, so I never could leave this one alone and I’ve tried this and that, as you can see in the photo of my much-marked up copy of the recipe. However, using the directions straight from the original produces a fantastic cookie, so start there and then tweak as you like.

If you want to tweak right away, I’d suggest using (in place of the chocolate chips) 4 oz. of good quality bittersweet chocolate bar that you chop up with a sharp chef’s knife into little pieces. That way you get bits of chocolate spread out into more of the cookie dough.

Reminder: when you begin to scoop the dough onto a cookie sheet, gently flatten the cookies, as it says in the recipe, otherwise you get almond flour haystacks and the final product won’t have as even a texture.

Even if you don’t need to avoid gluten, this makes a fun cookie to rotate with wheat-flour variations. Almond flour has a long history as a confection and ingredient in candies, cookies and cakes, so as you enjoy each bite, take a moment to imagine all the other historical cookie snackers over time who have indulged in the delights of almond flour! And smile at your budget as it thanks you for making a recipe from scratch that can taste just as good as the store-bought, commercially processed varieties!

Sources: Gluten-Free Almond Flour Chocolate Chip Cookies, at AllRecipes.com by King Arthur Flour, Jan. 20, 2022. Gluten-Free Almond Flour Chocolate Chip Cookies (allrecipes.com)