The Flour Combination You Need To Know For Your Next Batch Of Cookies

We all have a favored recipe for chocolate chunk, sugar, or oatmeal raisin cookies. From time to time, you may even upgrade these classic recipes with mix-ins like candy, salty snacks, or sweeteners like agave, the best ingredient for chewy chocolate chip cookies. Yet, what about alternative flours?

If you wish you had a reliable substitute for wheat flour when baking these delectable treats, you're in luck thanks to some worthwhile advice from chef and cookbook author, Jake Cohen. While Cohen is usually busy impressing his large number of followers on Instagram with his stellar bakes and gearing up for his upcoming show on A+E, "Jake Makes It Easy," he took some time to share his favorite alternative flour ratio for perfect homemade cookies with Food Republic. Cohen states, "For brownies or snacking cakes, a good 1-to-1 gluten-free replacement typically works great! For cookies, I typically do a combo of almond flour for tenderness and potato starch for structure."

Almond flour has long been considered a popular and worthwhile substitute for wheat flour in baked goods. Yet, while this nut-based alternative is nutritious and flavorful, it has more fat and moisture than wheat flour, which can ultimately change the structure of your cookies. Luckily, a bit of potato starch gives your cookies the perfect texture, creating tender cookies that also hold their shape. With the right ratio of Cohen's suggested ingredients, you'll be making scrumptious cookies in no time. 

To use the right amount of potato starch in your cookie recipe, first consider the primary ingredients at hand. Oftentimes, almond flour dough feels heavy and dense. Your ingredients may also have a hard time sticking together when mixed. While many recipes like Meyer lemon and olive oil cake contain both all-purpose and almond flour to achieve a fluffy consistency, cookies made primarily with almond flour transform into perfectly chewy yet crisp confections thanks to potato starch.

Potato starch is essentially dried protein flakes of processed potatoes. Like other common starches, they're made of long strands of carbohydrates that gelatinize when combined with heat and liquid. Depending on the other dry ingredients in your preferred recipe, amounts of added potato starch may vary. Yet, don't use more than 30% by weight or exceed one tablespoon for every cup of almond flour. Too much starch can leave your chewy pumpkin chocolate chip cookies crumbly and dry. You also have the option of swapping it out for another common variety like corn or tapioca starch, but you may not get the exact result as potato starch is the strongest, so to speak. Experiment with all available options and decide which starch produces the best results.