Chewy CSID-Friendly Cookies

DISCLAIMER: This recipe is intended to bea reduced-starch/starch-free/sucrose-free recipe.
These cookies are NOT low-calorie, sugar-free, or gluten-free.
Please use caution when adding a new food to a special or restricted diet.

Hello again recipe seekers. I am very glad that you have decided to join me today as I have a great recipe to share with you—CSID-Friendly COCONUT FLOUR COOKIES. Before you scoff and hit the back button on your browser in disgust at yet another failed cookie recipe, give me a minute to explain.

Way back in January of 2013 my oldest son was diagnosed with CSID, which is a genetic disorder which prevents his body from producing the enzymes needed to break down sucrose (table sugar) and maltose (a major component of all starch). Think of it like lactose-intolerance for sugar and starch. A few months later my second son received the same diagnosis. Over the past almost three years we have managed to recreate many "normal" foods in a CSID-friendly fashion, but I hadn't yet really been able to make a really good cookie recipe for them. This was somewhat of a sour point with me as I worked for two years developing cookie recipes for Lofthouse Cookies.

True, there are many recipes for cookies which do not use wheat flour as their base, and there are even some for cookies which don't use any grains. Meringues come to mind, as do one of my favorite Christmas cookies—Zimtsterne. While both of these cookies are delicious, they are a pain in the rear to make, and they don't really work for the good old American staple, chocolate chip cookies. My wife has searched on and off for a good CSID-friendly cookie recipe, and has found some based on coconut flour, but the cookies they yielded didn't really work for me. They were often dry and crumbly, and I wanted something soft, moist, and chewy.

Then one Saturday I was suddenly hit with inspiration, and I knew how to solve my problem. Chocolate chip cookies are sweet (a no brainer, just add a sweetner), but also chewy, which is brought about by a combination of hygroscopic properties of brown sugar and the protein network created by the gluten found in flour. My revelation was that I could replicate both of these by using agave syrup and vital wheat gluten. The bulking of wheat flour was replaced by almond flour, and the moisture absorption was accomplished with coconut flour. Further structure comes from two eggs instead of the usual one. My go-to replacement for sugar, dextrose, isn't sweet enough to use by itself, so I split the amount 50/50 with fructose. And just like that, a cookie was born.

What was a little suprising for me was that these cookies were actually really good. If you didn't tell me before hand that they were developed to be a CSID-friendly cookie, I probably wouldn't have known. They are delicately coconutty, delightfully chewy, and deliciously moist. These would be a good base for frosting, ice cream sandwiches, or eating with milk. Enjoy!

Show Notes Hide Notes

Step 0:

Preheat the oven to 350°F.
The following is only a suggestion, but it will make your cookies better. Allow all of your ingredients to come up to room temperature before starting to make the dough. The reason for this is that you are attempting to make an emulsion of fat (butter) and water (eggs). If your ingredients are cold when you start this process, you will end up getting a mixture while appears curdled, and it will take a good bit of mixing for it to come together into a smooth emulsion as it should.

Step 1:

In the bowl of a standing mixer, cream together 1/2 cup butter, 1/2 cup dextrose, 1/2 cup fructose, 1/4 cup agave syrup, 1/2 tsp baking soda, and 1/2 tsp salt until they mixture is light and fluffy.

I have mentioned this in a couple of recipes before, but there is logic in adding the baking soda and salt during the creaming step of cookie making. The first is that you are very evenly dispersing those minor ingredients, which prevents the dreaded lump of leavening you can get if you add them along with the flour. The second is that you are seeding the tiny tiny bubbles in the plastic butter with baking soda, which will help those bubbles expand more in oven.

Step 2:

Add 2 eggs, one at a time, along with 1 tsp HOT water, and 1 tsp vanilla.
The reason for adding the eggs one at a time is that you are trying to add a lot of liquid into fat, and it takes time for the emulsion to form. It will take less time if you gradually create the emulsion instead of overwhelming the fat all at once with a lot of liquid.
Mix until the ingredients are more-or-less homogenous.

Step 3:

Before starting this step, turn off your mixer.
To the stopped mixer, add 1/2 cup coconut flour, 1/2 cup almond flour, and 1/4 cup vital wheat gluten.

Slowly engage the mixer and blend the dry ingredients into the mixture already in the bowl. Continue mixing for 2 minutes after all the ingredients are combined.

This step holds the key to my madness. You see, a big problem with coconut flour or almond flour based cookies is that too many of them don't have enough structure to hold together after they are baked. Using a lot of eggs helps this problem, but it isn't enough to create the final texture I am going for. The gluten helps to counteract this lack of structure by creating a protein matrix for all the other inredients to be suspended in. However, this network needs to be developed by lots of mixing, which differs from normal cookie production which seeks to limit gluten.
Another note—the eggs do provide a fair amount of structure to the cookie, but don't give it the right final texture. If you think about products in which eggs are the sole structure, you will see what I mean. Take a souffle for instance: the eggs create enough structure to trap steam in the oven, and the souffle rises like.......something very pretty rising. But as soon as you take it out of the oven, that structure collapses because the eggs can't support the weight of the souffle. Angel food cakes get around this by having you cool them upside down. Meringue cookies avoid collapsing by drying out so much that the structure can't collapse.
Gluten sets at a higher temperature than egg protein (around 170°F instead of 160°F), so the egg helps trap bubbles until the gluten can take over.
By the way, now would be the time to mix in 1/2 cup to 1 cup of sugar-free chocolate chips.

Step 4:

Scoop the dough onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Flatten the dough slightly before sliding the pan into the preheated oven for 15 minutes.
You really do want the parchment paper for this. Because these cookies have a lot of protein in them, they will want to stick, and you just don't want that now do you?

Step 5

Allow the cookies to cool on the hot pan for a couple of minutes before moving them to a wire baking rack to cool completely.

CSID-Friendly Cookies—Yields: 21 Cookies

Volume Weight

Dough Ingredients

Creamed Ingredients	Wet Ingredients	Dry Ingredients

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F.
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream together the butter, dextrose, fructose, agave syrup, baking soda, and salt until light and fluffy.
3. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Add the hot water and vanilla and mix to combine before stopping the mixer.
4. Add the coconut flour, almond flour, and gluten to the mixer and slowly blend into the dry ingredients.
5. Once all the ingredients are well combined, mix an additional 2 minutes to develop some gluten.
6. Scoop onto a parchment-lined baking sheet and bake at 350°F for 15 minutes, or until the edges of the cookie begin to darken.
7. Allow to cool on the pan for a couple minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
8. Store in an airtight container for up to two weeks. The cookies will stay soft and moist during this time, and may stick together slightly.

This recipe was printed from Dinner in the Life of a Dad (samslaugh.blogspot.com)

CSID-Friendly Cookies 21 Cookies Soft & chewy cookies with a delicate coconut flavor. 1/2 cup Butter 1/2 cup Dextrose 1/2 cup Fructose 1/4 cup Agave Syrup 1 tsp Baking Soda 1/2 tsp Salt 2 Eggs 2 tsp Hot Water 1 tsp Vanilla 1/2 cup Coconut Flour 1/2 cup Almond Flour 1/4 cup Vital Wheat Gluten 1/2 cup Sugar-Free Chocolate Chips