Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Mochi Cookies

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baking, chewy cookies, chocolate, easy, fall, gluten-free, mochi, mochiko, pumpkin, recipes

With mochiko being a new-found flour friend, I’ve been on the hunt for good mochi cookie recipes.  Not really seeing anything super exciting, yet while also being taunted by  Pumpkin Mochi by justJENN recipes, I came up with a theory.

Pumpkin cookies are often super cakey, and mochi is wonderfully chewy. What if you just replace the regular flour in pumpkin cookies with mochiko?  Answer: Jessica worries and spends lots of quality time with google.

The solution that I was happiest with and ended up using came from Joy of Baking, where it’s suggested to use 7/8 cup rice flour to 1 cup all-purpose flour. Mochiko is actually sweet rice flour (or glutinous rice flour), but I decided to give it a shot anyway.  To make life easier, I went with her recipe for pumpkin cookies. 2 cups all-purpose flour?  1 3/4 cups mochiko!  Maybe too easy?

My uneasiness with flour experimentation and the lack of daylight at 1 a.m. means no process photos.  You can see that they turned out looking like totally legit cookies, though!  They tasted like totally legit delicious cookies, too.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Mochi Cookies
adapted from Joy of Baking

1 3/4 cups mochiko (glutinous rice flour)
1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoons ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs, room temperature
1 1/4 cups light brown sugar
1/2 cup canola oil or corn oil (or other flavorless oil)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup pumpkin puree
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 325F and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the mochiko, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and salt.

In the bowl of your mixer (or in a large bowl with a hand mixer), beat together the eggs and brown sugar until fluffy, about 2 minutes.  Add the oil, vanilla, and pumpkin puree and beat well.  Beat in the mochiko mixture just until incorporated.  Fold in the chocolate chips.

Using a cookie dough or ice cream scoop, drop the cookie dough on the prepared cookie sheet.  These don’t spread much so you don’t need to put them very far apart.  Bake for about 8 minutes, then with a spatula, gently flatten the cookies a bit and bake for another 8 minutes.  Remove from oven, let cool for a minute, then transfer the cookies to a cooling rack.

Once cooled, I put these in an air-tight container overnight.  The next day their texture was a bit different (softer), but mainly super moist.  My dad thought they were fine, but I decided to bake them again (about 10 minutes) to dry them out a little and give them a little crispness to the outsides.  It worked!

Again, this was totally an experiment so I’m not calling it a tried and true recipe, but I loved these!  My dad and grandma seemed to like them the most out of everyone, aside from myself.  Best of all, these are gluten-free and with only one simple, inexpensive flour.  (My 1lb box was less than $2.)  Woo!

If you’re not GF and/or into mochi things, Pumpkin Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies are also on Team Chewy!