chocolate chip cookies with a twist

I never get tired of chocolate chip cookies. They are a definite classic. But sometimes its fun to play around with them a bit and add a little excitement. These are my "experimental" cookies that I adapted from a few recipes. I made my friend Mike come over and be the taste-tester, and the verdict was "delicious"! These are made with gluten-free flour, which sometimes makes it hard to have light, fluffy, chewy cookies, but my twist was a little applesauce...and cranberry applesauce at that! Try them for yourself, I was quite pleased with the result...and subsequently ate three in a row.

Ingredients:

• 4 tbsp. cranberry applesauce
• 1/2 tsp. sea salt
• 1 tbsp. vanilla extract
• 1 and 1/2 cups white sugar
• 2 cups Bob's Red Mill gluten-free all-purpose baking flour
• 1/4 cup flax meal
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 egg
• 1 and 1/2 tsp. xantham gum
• 1 cup chocolate chips 

*note: since I played around with the recipe, please feel free to do the same. You can cut out the egg all together and use 6 tbsp. applesauce (which can be flavoured or regular), and most choco. chip recipes call for brown sugar and white sugar, but alas, my brown sugar was as solid as a rock. In that case, you would use 1/2 cup brown sugar and 1/2 cup white sugar. Most often though, you can just throw ingredients into choco. chip cookies.

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 C. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Mix together applesauce, egg, sugar, salt, and vanilla. In a seperate bowl, combine the flour, xantham gum, flax meal, and baking soda. Carefully add the wet ingredients into the dry, and mix until you have a grainy dough. Add the chocolate chips.

Scoop the dough in small amounts onto the cookie sheets. One thing I discovered afterwards is that they really spread out and puff up, so you can make the balls of dough fairly small, because they will expand. Press them down with the back of the spoon or the palm of your hand. Then put them in the oven! I have a gas stove, so they only took about 10 minutes to bake, but you can use your discretion. They should look slighlty brown and crispy around the edges, and puffy and soft in the middle. Don't let them get too brown on top. You can even touch them, and if they feel firm yet springy to the touch, then they are done!

Final step:

Eat them! And share with friends.