These super thick gluten free rocky road cookies are rich double chocolate chip cookies packed with nuts and marshmallows.
WANT TO SAVE THIS RECIPE?
We'll send the recipe to your inbox, so you can come back to it later!
Why we love these gluten free rocky road cookies
These chocolate cookies are thick and fudgy inside, and the bottom has just a hint of crispiness. The cookie dough is much less sweet than you might expect, so the rich chocolate taste and the flavor of the mix-ins really shine. They're as rich in chocolate as our gluten free monster cookies are in peanut butter flavor.
Even though there's no melted chocolate in the batter, there's nearly as much cocoa powder as there is all purpose gluten free flour, which makes for a very chocolatey cookie.
How to make this thick, rich chocolate cookie
I love a one-bowl cookie recipe, but this just isn't one of them. To make these gluten free rocky road chocolate cookies as thick and rich as they're meant to be, you'll need to cream the butter and sugars first before adding the dry ingredients (flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt).
Beating the butter and sugars, then adding eggs and vanilla and beating to combine incorporates air into the cookies without overworking the flours and ending up with a tougher cookie. The chopped chocolate wafers, nuts, and miniature marshmallows are then mixed in and the dough is ready for chilling in the refrigerator.
Made this way, this cookie dough spreads so little in the oven and holds its shape so well that you can make them any size you like. I've made them half the size you see here, into 24 cookies of only about 2-inches in diameter. They took about 9 minutes to bake.
I've also made them into tiny little 3/4-inch cookie buttons. Those took just under 8 minutes to bake to perfection.
Why chill the raw dough first?
I know how disappointing it can be when you decide to make a dozen or so drop cookies, and then find that the instructions recommend chilling the dough for an hour or more like our classic gluten free chocolate chip cookies. Worse, more like 24 hours, like our New York Times-style chocolate chip cookies.
This recipe calls for chilling the just-made cookie dough for at least an hour and up to a few days. You can bake them right away, but I really hope you'll hold off for at least an hour. At least hear me out? ?
Chilling the dough helps make these cookies suuuuper thick and the chocolate flavor deep and rich. It gives the flours time to absorb the moisture from the butter and eggs, and makes them more stable during baking.
Plus, chilling the dough allows the dehydrated marshmallows to soften into the dough a bit so that they aren't crunchy in the cookies after baking and cooling. Since they've been freeze-dried, these marshmallows won't ever become as soft and melty as regular marshmallows (and that's a good thing).
You can even chill the dough for days if you like. The sweet spot actually seems to be 24 hours of chilling the raw, unshaped dough. But once the dough has been in the refrigerator for that long, it will need to sit at room temperature for a few minutes before you are able to scoop it properly into rounds.
Don't chill the dough again before it goes into the oven, after the cookies have been individually shaped. I've put the dough in the oven nearly cold, and nearly at room temperature, and it doesn't seem to affect the outcome at all.
Ingredients and substitutions
Dairy-free: The main source of dairy in these cookies is the 10 tablespoons of unsalted butter. If you're dairy-free, just be sure that you use dairy-free chocolate wafers.
You should be able to replace the butter with Melt brand or Miyoko's Creamery brand vegan butter. I don't recommend using Earth Balance buttery sticks, since they have significantly more moisture than butter so the cookies tend to spread way too much when it's used to replace butter in cookies.
You can try using half (5 tablespoons) Earth Balance buttery sticks and half (5 tablespoons) Spectrum brand nonhydrogenated vegetable shortening, which has almost no moisture.
Egg-free: Since these cookies have only 2 eggs, you may be able to make them successfully using one “chia egg” (1 tablespoon ground white chia seeds + 1 tablespoon lukewarm water, mixed and allowed to gel) for each egg. I haven't tried this, though, so you'll have to experiment.
Nuts: Rocky road is typically made with a mixture of chocolate, almonds, and marshmallows. For these cookies, although I love chopped almonds, I usually reach for chopped roasted (unsalted) peanuts.
I always have roasted unsalted peanuts on hand for making our favorite homemade Larabars. Since the chocolate wafers in these cookies tend to be a bit crunchy (unless you're eating the cookies right out of the oven), I prefer to have the more tender crunch of peanuts to the denser crunch of almonds.
If you prefer another nut, like cashews or pecans, use those. Just keep in mind that all of these nuts have different textures so be sure you want that texture in your cookie. Chopped nuts don't change texture when baked for only 12 minutes in the oven as part of cookie dough.
Freeze-dried marshmallows: Kraft makes the Jet Puffed brand of miniature dehydrated marshmallows, and they practice truth-in-labeling. If there is a potential allergen source, it will always be listed directly in the ingredients list. You can of course always call the company if you would like further information.
Nuts brand is sold on Amazon (that's an affiliate link, but please shop around) and makes reliably gluten free miniature freeze-dried marshmallows. I buy them somewhat regularly, and love to use them for baking and hot cocoa in the colder months. ⛄️
Chocolate wafers: I often buy bittersweet chocolate wafers from Nuts dot com, and they're great for melting. But for eating, I really prefer Guittard brand, which has been popping up in grocery stores large and small lately.
If you don't have chocolate wafers, you can, of course, replace them in this recipe with semi-sweet or dark chocolate chips. I really like the wafers in this recipe, since they melt in delightful little slivers at different angles all over these thick, rich chocolate cookies.
Gluten Free Rocky Road Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 ½ cups (210 g) all purpose gluten free flour blends (I used Better Batter; please click thru for full info on appropriate blends)
- ¾ teaspoon xanthan gum (omit if your blend already contains it)
- 1 cup (80 g) unsweetened Dutch-processed cocoa powder
- ¾ teaspoon baking soda
- ¾ teaspoon kosher salt
- 10 tablespoons (140 g) unsalted butter at room temperature
- ½ cup (100 g) granulated sugar
- ½ cup (109 g) packed light brown sugar
- 2 (100 g (weighed out of shell)) eggs at room temperature
- 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- 3 ounces (84 g) dark chocolate wafers roughly chopped
- 3 ounces (84 g) roasted peanuts or almonds roughly chopped
- ¾ cup (30 g) mini freeze-dried marshmallows
Instructions
- In a medium-sized bowl, place the flour, xanthan gum, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt, and whisk to combine well. Set the bowl of dry ingredients aside.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment or a large bowl with a handheld mixer, place the butter, granulated sugar, and brown sugar, and beat on medium-high speed until light and fluffy (about 4 minutes).
- Add the eggs and vanilla, and beat again to combine well, scraping down the sides of the mixing bowl as necessary.
- Add the dry ingredients to the large mixing bowl, and beat on medium speed until just combined.
- Add the chocolate pieces, chopped nuts, and miniature marshmallows, and mix until the pieces are all evenly distributed throughout the cookie dough. The dough will be thick and relatively sticky.
- Transfer the cookie dough to the medium-sized bowl that held the dry ingredients, cover with plastic wrap, and place in the refrigerator to chill for at least an hour and up to a few days.
- Once the dough is nearly chilled, preheat your oven to 350°F. Divide the chilled dough into 12 equal portions, about 2 1/2 ounces each.
- Roll each into a ball then press into a disk about 3/4-inch thick, and place about 1 1/2 inches apart from one another on the prepared baking sheets.
- Place the baking sheets, one at a time, in the center of the preheated oven and bake for 12 minutes or until the cookies no longer glisten in the center and some have just begun to crack slightly.
- Remove the baking sheet from the oven and allow the cookies to cool on the sheet for about 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool further.
- Store in a sealed container at room temperature or in the refrigerator or freezer for longer storage.
WANT TO SAVE THIS RECIPE?
We'll send the recipe to your inbox, so you can come back to it later!
Thanks for stopping by!
Hi, I’m Nicole. I create gluten free recipes that really work and taste as good as you remember. No more making separate meals when someone is GF, or buying packaged foods that aren’t good enough to justify the price. At Gluten Free on a Shoestring, “good, for gluten free” just isn’t good enough! Come visit my bio!
Jeanne says
Hi Nicole,
I Love your recipes & have several of your cookbooks. I know your video music by heart! So, this might sound like a weird question to ask (please don’t think it’s silly), but why is your parchment paper wrinkled in each video? Do you crumple it up & then flatten it out to have small, slight ridges under the baked goods to create ventilation?
Thanks again for all your yummy recipes!
Nicole Hunn says
That’s so funny, Jeanne! Since most people watch videos on mute, I’ve been using that same loop for years now! ?I don’t think that question is silly at all, and you’re not the first to ask it. Crumpling the paper allows it to lie flat on the baking sheet so the edges (that had been in a roll) don’t curl over onto whatever is baking. It’s not for ventilation, but that was a good guess!!
AmyQ says
I’ve found the Kraft mini’s near the hot chocolate at Walmart :)
Carole says
Now I guess I have one more thing to order. The mailman is regularly having to come up the drive, 700 ft. and steep and curvy.
Found some caramel bits in my cupboard that I was going to use for caramel apples and was wondering if you ever tried them in cookies.Wonder if they would make a real mess when baked. Found out the hard way yesterday to always use parchment paper.
Have over 200 cookies baked and now have a new way to package them. Thanks.
Need Better Batter to get there flour mix back in stock as I’m running low, maybe I’ll try your method and just buy 25 pounds at a time.
Margaret says
Now if I could just find a way to get a delivery of those marshmallows from Amazon by this afternoon, I would be a happy baker. Today is baking day in this house–5 kinds of cookies, 2 candies, Milky Way cake made as cupcakes, and chocolate chip banana bread. But I would love to add these to the list. Alas, that will have to wait. but I am sure loving the idea of this recipe. Thank you for providing so many delicious goodies for us!
Carol Collett says
I’m making these right now for an office Christmas party this afternoon. Can’t wait to taste them!! :D