Gluten-free Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars

Name: Gluten-free Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 28 min
Total time: 1 h 13 min
Yield: 24
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: 2 1/4 cups (~282 grams) good all-purpose gluten-free flour blend; 1/2 tsp. xanthan gum*; 1 tsp. baking soda; 1 tsp. salt; 2 ounces cream cheese, room temp; 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted; 1 cup packed brown sugar; 1/2 cup sugar; 2 tsp. vanilla extract; 2 egg yolks (room temp); 1 1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips; 1/2 cup semi-sweet mini chocolate chips; 1/4 cup additional semi-sweet chocolate chips for topping if desired

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February 10, 2017 by Michelle Palin ~ My Gluten-free Kitchen 27 Comments

Perfect for bake sales, after school treats, and potlucks, these gluten-free chocolate chip cookie bars will be a hit with all the chocolate lovers! They’re easier and quicker to make than cookies.

So many of you have tried and love my gluten-free chewy chocolate chip cookie recipe, that I thought I’d post a few adaptations of it this year. First up – gluten-free chocolate chip cookie bars!

It’s February and I’m doing Chocolate Month here on the blog! All the rest of the recipes that I’ll be posting this month have chocolate in them. Why? Really, why not? I am a self-proclaimed chocoholic and have sooooo many chocolate recipes to share with you, so I’m super excited about this month! As my schedule allows, I’ll be posting as often as I can to bring them to you! I have five recipes already developed and photos taken along with 3 more that I’m working on, so you might just get a whole lot of recipes this month!

Okay, back to these yummy gluten-free chocolate chip cookie bars. In making these bars instead of cookies, I made a few changes. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had some disappointingly dry cookie bars before. I didn’t want that to happen here, so I increased the butter so that these bars wouldn’t be dry at all. It was a good decision!

Secondly, I used two different sizes of chocolate chips. I wanted to make sure there was a bit of chocolate in every single bite! I used both regular semi-sweet morsels and mini semi-sweet morsels. You could also mix it up by using some milk chocolate and some dark chocolate. But definitely consider including some mini ones for sure. They help make sure that you don’t get a single little bite that isn’t chocolatey!

Notes on ingredients for these gluten-free chocolate chip bars:

Flour: tested successfully with Gluten Free Mama’s Almond Blend and Cup4Cup. Other varieties of flour that are not only rice based should work okay in these. With the two I recommended, there isn’t any grittiness. I can’t guarantee that with your favorite blend, but do feel free to try it!
The cream cheese is a key ingredient here. Don’t skip it!
So is the butter. Mmm, butter.
Chocolate chips: for good chocolate chips that are easy to find at most grocery stores, I love Guittard semi-sweet chocolate baking chips. They are made in a gluten-free, and peanut-free facility. If you’d like chocolate chips that are certified gluten-free as well as top 8 free, I love and recommend Enjoy Life semi-sweet chocolates available as mini chips or mega chunks.

I like sprinkling a few more chips on them for the last couple minutes of baking for that shiny, slightly melted look like you see in the pictures above. If you’d like that too, just reserve some of the chocolate chips called for in the recipe. However, if you’re wanting to pack these up to mail to someone, I’d skip the chocolate chips on top so they aren’t so messy. Here’s what they look like without the chocolate chips added to the top:

These would be a fun treat to bring to share at a potluck or to mail to a loved one. Let me know if you make them and what flour you used!

Oh, and if you want to make some fun Valentine’s treats, make sure you check out these Valentine’s gluten-free chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwiches!

Gluten-free Chocolate Chip Bars Recipe:

Yield: 24 bars