Heart Shaped Chocolate Chip Cookies
Gluten-Free // Makes 7-8
The perfect Valentine's Day dessert to treat your sweetheart, bestie, or yourself with! They're adorable, festive, and have a desirable cookie texture. Plus, they taste amazing and everyone will be asking you for the recipe.
Prep time: 2 hours
Cook time: 15 min
February always feels like a transitional month. After the holiday season, January is a reset month with scheduled normalizing and a focus to get back into a routine. With winter still in full swing (at least in Colorado) Valentine's Day comes at the perfect time during a month that we tend to look past. Whether you are celebrating Valentine's day with a significant other, friends or even family, you deserve to feel loved and give love! These gluten-free cookies are inspired by Levain Bakery's thick, gooey cookies. What makes these cookies special are the inclusions! Packed with Purely Elizabeth Vanilla Chocolate Chip Ancient Grain Granola, dark, white and colored chocolate chips and toasted pecans, they are the type of cookie you'll be craving on V-Day.
Ingredients you will need to make these Gluten-Free Valentine's Day Cookies:
Gluten-Free Flour: For this particular recipe, we used the Bob's Red Mill 1:1 Gluten-Free Flour Blend, but we have had a lot of success with the King Arthur Flour 1:1 Gluten-Free Flour and the Cup4Cup. Some flours aren't available at certain stores so any gluten-free flour blend should work for this. If you didn't want to use gluten-free flour, feel free to swap all-purpose flour.
Arrowroot Starch: The starch helps create the tight bind on these cookies without making them overly dense.
Baking Powder + Baking Soda: Don't forget the leavening! Leavening agents are extremely important for baking, especially gluten-free baking.
Unsalted Butter: You cannot replace the flavor and quality butter provides to a cookie. If you don't want to use butter, you can swap in coconut oil; however, we have found the most success with butter.
Coconut Sugar: The coconut sugar gives these cookies the deep rich color and flavor.
Maple Syrup: The maple syrup helps bring some moisture to the batter along with sweetness.
Vanilla Extract: No chocolate chip cookie recipe is complete without vanilla extract!
Salt: Salt elevates all of the rest of the flavors in the cookie and rounds out your bite.
Eggs: Eggs help create aeration and bind that gives the cookies a chewy texture.
Chocolate Chips: We used a blend of dark chocolate, white chocolate and colored chips (for a fun pop of a color).
Granola: Our Vanilla Chocolate Chip Ancient Grain Granola is a perfect addition to the batter and elevates the chocolate chip flavor profile.
Toasted Pecans: It's important to use toasted pecans for this recipe and not just raw pecans. When you toast the pecans, the nutty flavor comes through so much deeper and gives the cookies a unique flavor. We love to toast our own by placing the pecans on a baking sheet and bake at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes until you begin to smell them and they deepen in color.
INGREDIENTS
2 ½ cups Gluten Free Flour (Cup4Cup, Bob’s Red Mill, or King Arthur Flour 1:1 Gluten-Free Flour works the best)
¼ cup grams arrowroot starch
1 ¾ tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
½ cup unsalted butter, room temperature
¾ cup coconut sugar
¼ cup maple syrup
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 ½ tsp kosher salt
1 large egg, room temperature
1 egg yolk, room temperature
¼ cup dark chocolate chips
¼ cup white chocolate chips
¼ cup red-colored chocolate chips, optional. Can substitute white or dark chocolate for these.
1 cup Purely Elizabeth Vanilla Chocolate Chip Ancient Grain Granola
1 cup toasted pecans (optional)
DIRECTIONS
1. Combine dry ingredients: flour, arrowroot starch, baking powder, and baking soda in a small bowl and set aside.
2. In the bowl of your stand mixer or in a separate bowl, cream together the butter, coconut sugar, maple syrup, vanilla, and sea salt until light and fluffy (about 4-6 minutes). Scrape down the bowl.
3. With the mixer on low speed, add the egg and egg yolk, one at a time, scraping the bottom of the bowl after each addition.
4. With the mixer on low, add the dry ingredients until just combined and you see no dry bits.
5. Add the chocolate, granola, and nuts and mix shortly to fully incorporate.
6. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and portion the dough into 4oz cookies (you want these to be nice and thick!). Using a heart-shaped cookie cutter, press the dough into the cookie cutter (This worked better vs. rolling out and cutting the cookies into the shape). Wrap the sheet tray with plastic wrap and refrigerator for at least 2 hours up to 12 hours. This allows the dough to rest and hydrate before baking.
7. Once the dough has rested, preheat the oven to 375°F.
8. To keep a more defined heart shape, we baked the cookies in the cookie cutters (this is optional). Arrange 4 cookies per half sheet and sprinkle with flaky sea salt. Bake for 10 minutes, rotate the tray in the oven, and reduce the temperature to 350°F. Bake for an additional 4-5 minutes until the edges are crispy and the inside still looks underbaked. You want the cookies to come out of the oven softer on the inside.
9. Allow cookies to cool for at least 5 minutes on the baking sheet before transferring them to a cooling rack. Repeat with the remaining cookie dough.
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