I’ve been working on perfecting my gluten free toffee pecan cookies for a while now and am finally happy with the recipe. They are a soft-centred style cookie, with gorgeous crispy edges, very much like a gluten free Ben’s Cookie (a very gluteny nationwide cookie chain). Filled with chunks of pecan nuts and little pools of toffee, you’ll want to make these toffee pecan cookies again and again.
To make these I started by adapting my beloved white chocolate chunk cookie recipe, but because of the addition of toffee I needed to play around with the volumes of the ingredients. I did not want they to be overly sweet. It took me three attempts to get them just right, and I’m really happy with how they have turned out.
I have been using Sainsburys toffee milk chocolate eclairs to make these cookies, as I like the gentle chocolately note they add, but you can use any plain soft toffee sweets too. In the recipe I recommend microwaving them (wrappers off!) for a few seconds to soften them, but if your kitchen is already nice and warm you may be able to skip this step. Basically you want them soft enough to be able to snip them into small pieces with a pair of scissors. Too hard and you’ll risk either injuring yourself or having tiny toffee shards pinging all over your kitchen!
Scroll on down for recipe details, plus some handy pictures to help you while you are baking these cookies.
Gluten Free Toffee Pecan Cookies (Makes 12)
Toffee Pecan Cookies
Ingredients
- 170g unsalted butter
- 100g light brown sugar
- 150g caster sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla essence
- 1 medium egg + 1 egg yolk
- 350g gluten free plain flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 0.5 tsp salt
- 0.5 tsp xanthan gum
- 75g pecan nuts
- 100g soft toffees or toffee chocolate eclairs
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 180C (fan oven).
- Melt the butter in a microwave for approx 30-40 seconds, until just liquid. There might still be a few small lumps when you take it out, but give the melted butter a stir until these have melted too. Add the light brown sugar and caster sugar to the warm butter, stir them well to combine.
- Next add the vanilla essence, egg and egg yolk the butter sugar mixture. Mix well until a smooth batter has formed.
- In a second bowl, mix the plain gluten free flour, baking powder, xanthan gum and salt, stirring to fully combine them.
- Pour the butter/egg/sugar batter into the bowl with the dry ingredients and mix with a wooden spoon until you have a soft cookie dough. The dough will be shiny and slightly wetter than standard cookie dough, but should come away from the sides of the bowl as you mix. If it is too dry add a tablespoon of milk, if too sticky add a tablespoon of gluten free flour (and continue adjusting until you have the right consistency).
- Chop the pecans into rough chunks and then stir into the cookie dough until evenly distributed.
- Remove any wrappers from the toffees/eclairs and place in a small bowl. Microwave for 10 seconds or a little more until they are more malleable and soft to touch. Use a pair of scissors to carefully snip the toffees into small pieces, then mix through the cookie dough to distribute evenly.
- Line two baking trays with greaseproof paper (or reusable liners). Divide the cookie dough into 12 pieces, roll into balls and place 6 balls on each baking tray. Press each ball down gently until the cookie dough is approx 1.5cm in thickness.
- Pop them into the middle of the oven to bake for 10 minutes, after which time they will be lightly browned at the edges. When you take them out of the oven leave them to cool on the tray for 5 minutes (as they will be very soft at first and may have some yummy toffee bits on the edges, which need to harden). Once they have firmed up, carefully transfer them to a wire wrack to cool fully.
For more tasty gluten free bakes, why not try one of my other recipes while you are here :):
Enjoy! x
