Desserts Recipes

Chocolate Chip and Pepitas Cookies (Gluten-Free)

Spring break is here! With two and a half weeks to fill, we’ve got lots of activities on our to do list. Over the weekend, the girls and I sat down with a dry erase marker and our family whiteboard to brainstorm things to do this week. So far we’ve got library day, board game day, make slime day, and baking day marked in.

For baking day, we made gluten-free chocolate chip cookies. Normally I add some kind of nuts, like walnuts or pecans, but this time we decided to try something a little different (and festive!) so we added raw pepitas (shelled pumpkin seeds) instead. Cookies made with gluten-free flour take longer to bake than regular wheat flour, so our pepitas were perfectly roasted by the time the cookies were ready to come out of the oven. Yum! Our cookies were crispy around the outside and chewy on the inside.

Baking is a lot more fun now that the girls get so excited over the chance to help. Tee read the recipe, and Kay gathered all the ingredients for me. They took turns mixing so they were both covered in flour, and then they both formed the cookie dough balls and pressed them down on the cookie sheet. I handled the oven duties of course, but the best part was eating our cookies still hot as soon as they came out of the oven! We all agreed that slightly burned fingers and tongues were more than worth it!

We took our plate of warm cookies to the couch and put on Star Wars: The Force Awakens in preparation for watching Episode VIII when it comes out on Blu-ray later this month. What a fantastic way to kick off spring break!

I had a hard time fighting off the rest of the family long enough to take pictures of our cookies for this post!

Chocolate Chip and Pepitas Cookies

Ingredients
  

  • 1 cup butter softened
  • 1 cup white sugar
  • 1 cup packed brown sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 2.5 cups gluten-free flour
  • 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
  • 1 cup raw pepitas shelled pumpkin seeds

Instructions
 

  • Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
  • Cream together butter, white sugar, and brown sugar until smooth. Mix in eggs and vanilla.
  • Place flour in a separate bowl and mix in baking soda and salt.
  • Add wet ingredients to flour mixture and mix until well combined.
  • Stir in chocolate chips and pepitas.
  • Form cookie dough into even balls 1.5" in diameter and press flat (about 0.5" thick) on ungreased pan.
  • Bake for about 20 minutes until bottoms of cookies are browned.

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14 Comments

  • I am a big fan of pepitas but my kids not so much. This recipe would be a great way to get the nutrition of them into a treat that my kids would enjoy.

  • I love chocolate chip cookies so I am especially excited about trying your recipe with the added nutrition of the pumpkin seeds.

  • I love how yummy they look and the fact that they have the pumpkin (pepita) seeds in there – for extra goodness!!!

  • These sound very different and I would never thought of using a seed in place of a nut, I might just have to try this!

  • Yummy I’d love the pumpkin seeds in chocolate chip cookies but I’d be the only one to eat them.

  • Thank you for this recipe! These cookies look delicious! I have no issue with gluten myself, but I have a friend who’s gluten intolerant and when she comes to visit, now at least I can offer her some great cookies with coffee! 🙂

  • I actually came to find out what pepitas were, but now that I’ve read it, I want to make them. My daughter baked with her little boyfriend last weekend, and didn’t want me in the kitchen. But I’m not crying, it’s all part of growing up and I’m happy… honest, I just have something in my eye. I miss the slightly burnt fingers and tongues of yesteryear.