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These classic gluten free chocolate chip cookies have crisp brown edges, soft centers, and deep, rich flavor in every bite. The secrets to their ideal texture and all that flavor are in the mixing-wet-into-dry method and chilling the raw dough first, even just for 30 minutes.
I was known for these cookies long before I started baking gluten free in 2004—and there’s almost always a batch in my freezer, both baked and raw. With nearly 400 five-star reviews, this is the ultimate recipe.
“This is an awesome cookie. We have had a family recipe that we all loved till we had to go gluten free and this was the first recipe that is better than that! Thank you so much, Nicole ❣️”
Why this recipe works
Thick, chewy texture – These cookies are thick and chewy in the center with just enough crispness around the edges.
Deep flavor – Chilling the raw dough creates a rich, caramel-like depth you won’t get from the typical cookie recipe.
Reliable results – With these recipe proportions and special methods, your cookies won’t spread too much or fall flat. They bake up just right every time.
Easy to customize – Swap some chips for chopped nuts, try almond extract, or use vegan butter. They’re flexible—and still amazing.
Ingredients explained
You only need a handful of classic ingredients to make these cookies—with a few key tips to get the texture and flavor just right.
- Gluten free flour blend: Any of my recommended gluten free flour mixes will work here, especially Better Batter's original blend or Nicole's Best. Bob’s Red Mill 1-to-1 (in the blue bag) also performs very well. If you're using Bob's and don't plan to chill the dough at all, add another 1/2 teaspoon of xanthan gum to help control the cookies' spread in the oven.
- Baking soda: Helps with browning in the oven without overbaking or burning.
- Salt: Balances the sweetness and sharpens the other flavors.
- Granulated sugar: Adds sweetness, tenderness and helps the cookies brown and crisp. .
- Light brown sugar: Provides extra moisture and a rich, caramel-like flavor.
- Butter: Adds flavor and helps create crisp edges and chewy centers. Make sure it’s at cool room temperature so it blends evenly but doesn't melt outside the oven. If you're starting with cold butter, chop it roughly and let it sit on the counter for about 20 minutes.
- Eggs: Help the cookies rise and adds structure that is particularly helpful when baking with flour without gluten.
- Vanilla extract: Adds a warm background note that boosts all the other flavors.
- Chocolate chips: Use your favorite gluten free variety. I love Trader Joe’s 72% dark chocolate chips and Ghirardelli chips.
How to make gluten free chocolate chip cookies (step by step photos)
See the recipe card for ingredient amounts, and keep scrolling for a visual on how to make gluten free chocolate chip cookies in your own kitchen.
1. Mix the dry ingredients – In a medium bowl, whisk together your gluten free flour blend, xanthan gum (if needed), baking soda, salt, granulated sugar, and brown sugar. Add the brown sugar last and use a fork to break up any lumps that don't combine with the rest of the batter and melt separately in the oven.
2. Add the wet ingredients – Add the softened butter, beaten eggs, and vanilla right into the center of the dry ingredients, instead of creaming the butter and sugars separately to ensure a dense, chewy cookie with a crackled top.
3. Stir in the chips – Fold in the chocolate chips until they’re evenly distributed throughout the dough. Adding them in last avoids getting the chips wet from the eggs, which can cause the chocolate to bleed into the rest of the cookie.
4. Shape the cookies – Scoop the dough with a spring-loaded scoop, roll into balls, and flatten into disks to ensure the exact right amount of spread in the oven. The dough will be thick but workable, and should easily hold its shape when rolled and pressed.
5. Chill the dough – For thick, chewy cookies that have tons of flavor and hold their shape well, chill the shaped dough at least until firm, ideally overnight. You can also bake a few cookies right away, or after a short 30-minute refrigerator chill, and chill the rest overnight.
6. Bake – Bake at 350°F for about 12 minutes, just until the edges are golden and the centers are mostly set. You don't want the center to glisten like it's still wet, but be careful not to overbake and dry them out. Let the cookies sit on the baking sheet for a few minutes or they'll fall apart. Once set, they're very stable.
Expert tips
The secret to deep flavor: why we chill the dough
Making something as simple as chocolate chip cookies, it seems particularly annoying for me to ask you to chill your dough at all, much less overnight. But chilling the dough over time creates thick, flavorful cookies in 2 ways:
- Cold cookie dough bakes thicker and chewier since cold butter melts more slowly than warm or even room temperature butter.
- The older the dough, the more flavorful it becomes as the sugars begin to lose some of their moisture both into the air and into the flour, intensifying the caramel flavor of the brown sugar.
As a bonus, if your flour has any grittiness, it will soften as the dough ages. If you're impatient, bake a few now and chill the rest overnight.
Don't cream the butter and sugar
Unlike a lot of cookie recipes that begin by beating together the butter and sugar until creamy, here we mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. Creaming the butter and sugar aerates the cookies to make them lighter and the cookie dough very smooth. Here, we want a dense and chewy cookie with the texture of a crackled, uneven top, so we mix wet-into-dry.
Add extra chips on top
For photo-worthy cookies, press a few extra chips into the tops before baking—or just make sure the shaped dough has some visible chips on top. You can also add a couple of extra chips to just-baked cookies before they've set.
Skip the mixer
If you can, mix by hand. Using a stand or handheld mixer flattens the texture and creates a more uniform cookie texture. If you must use a mixer, work in the chocolate chips by hand to avoid overmixing.
🔄 Ingredient swaps
Unlike other recipes that require you to add almond flour, these are naturally nut-free, and easy to adapt for dairy-free or egg-free baking, too.
Dairy free
Swap the butter for Spectrum or Crisco vegetable shortening or block-style vegan butter (like Melt or Miyoko’s Creamery). Shortening makes crisp-edged cookies but doesn't brown much, and the dough hardens in the refrigerator, so be sure to shape it before chilling. If you're using vegan butter, chill the dough overnight to prevent spreading. And don’t forget to use dairy-free chocolate chips!
Egg free
Replace each egg with a “chia egg” (1 tablespoon ground white chia seeds + 1 tablespoon warm water, mixed and gelled). Or try 100 grams plain Greek-style yogurt at room temperature and add 1 more tablespoon gluten free flour. Either way, chill the dough overnight for the best structure and texture.
Easy mix-in ideas
Try swapping up to half of the chocolate chips, by weight, with:
- Flavored chips (like white chocolate or butterscotch—check for gluten!)
- Chopped nuts (like pecans or walnuts)
- Soft dried fruit (like cranberries or raisins)
Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 ¼ cups (315 g) all purpose gluten free flour blend, (See Recipe Notes)
- ½ teaspoon xanthan gum, omit if your flour blend already contains it; use a heaping 1/2 teaspoon
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ¾ cup (150 g) granulated sugar
- ¾ cup (164 g) packed light brown sugar
- 8 tablespoons (112 g) unsalted butter, at cool room temperature (69°F is ideal)
- 2 (100 g (weighed out of shell)) eggs, at room temperature, beaten
- 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
- 12 ounces semisweet chocolate chips, plus more as desired, up to 16 ounces total
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 350°F (unless you plan to chill your cookie dough overnight). Line baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.
- In a large bowl, whisk together the flour blend, xanthan gum, salt, baking soda, and granulated sugar.
- Add the brown sugar and whisk again, breaking up any lumps with a fork if needed.
- Create a well in the center and add the butter, eggs, and vanilla. Mix the wet ingredients together in tight circles in the center, then stir into the dry ingredients until combined.
- Fold in 12 ounces of chocolate chips. The dough will be thick but workable. Add more chips if desired.
- Divide the dough into 21 (or up to 24, if you used more chips) portions, about 50 grams each. Roll into balls, then flatten into disks about 1 1/2-inches in diameter and 1/2-inch thick.
- If you like, press a few extra chips onto each dough ball for a more chocolatey look.
- Arrange cookies about 2 inches apart on the lined baking sheets.
- Cover and chill the shaped dough for 12 hours—or up to 5 days—for the thickest, best-flavored cookies. Even chilling the dough for 30 minutes will help control oven spread.
- Bake one sheet at a time until the cookies are golden on the edges and just set in the center, about 12 minutes.
- Let cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
Notes
This recipe works best with Better Batter’s original blend or Nicole’s Best multipurpose flour. Bob’s Red Mill 1-to-1 works, too. If you aren't chilling the raw dough overnight before baking, add an extra ½ teaspoon xanthan gum. I don’t recommend Cup4Cup anymore—the formula has changed and results have become inconsistent. Want to make your own blend? Check out my mock all purpose gluten free flour blends. Dairy-free tips
Swap the butter with an equal amount (by weight) of vegetable shortening—Crisco and Spectrum are my go-to choices. Shape the dough before chilling, since shortening hardens in the fridge. You can also use block-style vegan butter, but be sure to chill the dough overnight. And don’t forget to use dairy-free chocolate chips. Egg-free tips
Replace both eggs with two chia or flax “eggs,” or use 100 grams of plain Greek-style yogurt plus 1 tablespoon more gluten free flour. Whichever you choose, chilling the dough overnight is key to preventing too much spread during baking. Approximate nutrition information is based on 12 ounces chocolate chips.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
How to store the dough or cookies
Room temperature: Baked cookies stay fresh in a sealed container at room temperature for up to 5 days.
Refrigerator: You can store shaped, unbaked cookie dough in the fridge for several days. Keep it in a sealed zip-top bag or airtight container and bake in batches as needed.
Freezer: Freeze both baked cookies and raw, shaped dough for up to 3 months. You can bake the dough straight from frozen—just flatten the disks slightly first, and add 2 minutes to the baking time. Or let the raw disks come to cool room temperature before baking.
FAQs
Yes and no. Chilling helps control spread, enhances the texture, and deepens the flavor. You can bake the shaped cookies right away and they will still taste great, but even 30 minutes of chilling time will help control spread. Maybe bake some now, and chill the rest!
You may have overmeasured the flour, skipped xanthan gum, or used butter that was too cold to mix in properly. Or maybe you just didn’t let them cool long enough—they’re delicate at first!
Your dough may have been too warm, your butter too soft, or your baking sheet still hot from the last batch.
If your flour blend doesn't contain xanthan gum, adding guar gum or konjac powder instead can work. For a full explanation, see our post about xanthan gum substitutes using this recipe for testing.
Yes, you can refrigerate the raw, unshaped cookie dough in a sealed container . Just don't pack it down too much in the container or it will be too hard to scoop. You may have to let it sit at room temperature briefly until it's scoopable.
The last time I made these they turned out perfect. A little big, but they were fully cooked and chewy. This time, they were burnt and massive even though I made more cookies with the same amount of batter as last time, which makes absolutely no sense.
When a recipe doesn’t turn out as expected after it’s already turned out properly, Claudia, it can be very frustrating. I’m sorry you’re having that experience. You’ll have to retrace your steps to see where you used different ingredients, measured differently, potentially made an ingredient substitution that you thought maybe didn’t matter but did, etc. It might be as simple as your oven running hot, or your having let the dough rest before and not this time. The recipe hasn’t changed, though.
best gluten free cookies ever
Hi, I realized that this is the recipe on the back of the Better Batter bag! They ARE delicious! This is my “go-to” chocolate chip cookie recipe. I laughed at chilling the dough 12 hrs! I bake two cookies after chilling 30 minutes, then the rest goes into a log wrapped in plastic wrap & foil and into the refrigerator. Thanks for all of your hard work.
Hi, Kim, yes, I provided the recipe to Better Batter many, many years ago to reprint on their bag! I had forgotten about that…
that is brilliant to bake a few now and the rest later! never would have thought of that and wondering how I was going to have the discipline to wait a whole day to bake!
I made these cookies yesterday after trying many other GF chocolate chip cookie recipes, and they are definitely a favorite in our house! I did use about 1 cup krusteaz GF 1:1 flour and finished off with divided sunset 1:1 flour, both from Walmart. I was inpatient and put them in the freezer on cookie sheets for about a hour and a half and turned out perfectly. Appreciate the delicious recipe!
My kids loved it!! We all went for some more
Made these for my great niece who is recovering from a car accident in hospital. They were easy to make, the cookie dough mixture was yum and the cooked cookies were really beautiful. My niece gave them a 5 star rating. Thank you.
Thank you so much for sharing that, Anne. I hope she’s okay! I’m so glad you and she enjoyed the cookies, and I bet it helped lift her spirits that you went out of your way for her like that. ❤️
I made these to take to the office, and they were so good that I purposely left at home the gluten-containing chocolate chip cookies. I made a sign, “gluten-free cookies for everyone!” they are so good. One money-saving hack I made was that instead of using a pre-mixed gluten-free flour, I used rice flour from an Asian market: 1 1/2 cups rice flour, and 3/4 cup almond flour, then a heaping 1/2 teaspoon of xanthan gum. This will be my go-to recipe from now on.
I’m glad your flour blend worked for you, Sonia! It’s kind of a magic recipe, so I guess it was truly adaptable to your mix of rice flour and almond flour. Just something to keep in mind about rice flour from the bins in Asian markets is that, if someone is celiac or has a high degree of gluten sensitivity, those flours are often cross-contaminated with gluten from other bins. But it sounds like it worked out great for you, and I’m really glad to hear it!
This recipe is very similar to an old church cookbook recipe but it call for 1/2 c of sugar and 1/2 of shortening? I made your mock better batter flour mix. What are your thoughts on that much butter and shortening as far as baking? Are they going to spread a lot during baking?
I’m afraid that’s really a different recipe, Traci, and you’ll have to experiment. When you say “1/2 of shortening,” are you referring to 1/2 cup of shortening? There is 1/2 cup (or 8 tablespoons) butter in this recipe, and butter has a lot of flavor and a lot more moisture than shortening, which actually causes cookies to spread less, not more (the lack of moisture in shortening). Granulated sugar makes cookies crisper, and brown sugar makes them more tender as it has more moisture. It’s really chemistry, and every change has an effect. I’d highly recommend making this recipe exactly as written before you start making changes, and then you’ll be better able to predict how your changes might affect the result. Recipe testing is a lot of trial and error!
Thanks for responding. My gluten free journey started a few years ago when I was diagnosed with a thyroid disorder. I’ve tried so many different store bought gf flour blends and, as you said, always end up with dry gritty baked goods. When I came across your site and saw your mixes for different baking applications I was eager to try them. I used to be a great baker but gf baking has left me feeling defeated. I will be experimenting with your mixes as I’m determined to have good Christmas cookies this year.
I understand, I really do, Traci. Most people think that that is the best that they can hope for with gluten free baked goods: at least somewhat dry, at least somewhat gritty. That absolutely is not the best we can do. It is, however, the most widely available, accessible gluten free products that produce these lackluster results. That’s why for 15 years and counting, I have been on a mission to elevate the standards, and it often makes people very angry that they can’t just buy a flour blend off the shelf and have it taste like “regular” baked goods. Or bake with whatever they have on hand and have it taste like it should. And that anger is often directed at me, but I’m just the messenger—and trying as hard as I can to make things better. But I’m only one person. :)
Nicole, could you please send me your NYT chocolate chip cookie recipe? The one where you just get 9 cookies and your daughter is holding one in her hand . You must have taken it off your site it’d nowhere to be found . I need ingredients not just video with steps . Thank you !
Hi, Sandra, it’s still on the blog. Here’s a link, but you can also always use the search function so you don’t have to wait for me!
My go-to cookie recipe! Thank you!
You’re so welcome, Maddy!