Rice Flour Cookies Experiment

I'm cheap.  I really really hate spending a lot of money, especially on something that doesn't last long, like food. 

This can be tough in the gluten free world.  Especially since gluten free baking flour mixes cost a heck of a lot more than regular white baking flour does.  Because of this I often try to substitute straight white rice flour in recipes rather than buying a GF flour mix or messing with multiple GF flours and adding Xantham Gum.  It works okay for some things.  Of course, the quality is never as good as it would be if I'd used the expensive flours, but I'm fine with that.  I just experiment and then decide whether or not I can live with my cheaper rice flour version.         

One night I decided I wanted to try my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe using just rice flour in place of the wheat flour.  Here's the result:

Here's how they should have looked (I made these for my husband):My verdict:  They were completely flat.  They got runny and spread out on the sheet.  But I still enjoyed eating them.  It reminded me of eating cookie dough (slightly grainy cookie dough).  I think they'd be tasty mixed in with vanilla ice cream to make homemade cookie dough ice cream.  Yum!  

If I craved chocolate chip cookies all the time I'd probably do this more.  It's definitely the cheapest.  Especially if you have access to a wheat grinder to grind your own rice (thanks to my father-in-law and mother-in-law!).  But I rarely crave chocolate chip cookies now (that went away after about 6 months of being gluten free), so it's not a big deal.  Buying the occasional Betty Crocker GF Chocolate Chip Cookies mix isn't going to break the bank, so I'll probably stick with that for the most part.  Especially if I'm going to make them for a party or for someone else. 

But if you do miss your cookies and your cookie dough and you're just making it for yourself... give this a try!