The Ultimate Guide to Making Chocolate Baking Discs: These rich, crispy gluten-free chocolate wafer cookies are perfect for making icebox cakes and cookie crusts. Stock up for summer!
Why you need chocolate baking discs
Remember narrow Nabisco chocolate wafer cookies? These gluten-free chocolate cookies are crispy and crunchy like those. They are ideal for important summer tasks.
Cutout cookies with blunt edges haven’t spread or risen much during baking. The texture is very different from cakey soft and chewy chocolate cookies. The give when you bite into them makes them ideal for ice cream sandwiches.
When crushed, these crunchy cookies make great crumbs. They’re also great for all kinds of icebox cakes. I know that calling something “no bake” after baking cookies is misleading. But listen!
I’ve searched everywhere but can’t find simple Nabisco-style gluten-free chocolate wafer cookies. You can buy GF graham crackers (though I prefer mine) and crispy chocolate chip cookies.
Simple, noble chocolate wafers must be baked. In a sealed glass container, they last weeks on the kitchen counter or months in the freezer.
Tips for rolling and cutting discs dough
Place spoonfuls or ice cream scoops of drop cookies on a baking sheet. They’re good baking starters.
Rolling dough with a rolling pin and cutting shapes with a cookie cutter or knife creates cut-out cookies like these chocolate wafer cookies. Some of you call that cookbook process a “page turner”. The dough must be rolled out, so you move to the next page.
However, rolling cookie dough before cutting it has many benefits! You’ll find it easy with my tips and tricks.
The how-to video in this post shows me using these tricks. If you want to dig deeper, Gluten Free Classic Snacks has a longer version on page 28. Now for the tips…
1. Touch the dough. Rolling dough evenly is the scariest part. How it feels matters more than how it looks.It’s hard to tell cookie dough thickness with your eyes. However, your hands will immediately detect thick or thin spots on the dough.
2. Use right paper. If a recipe says to roll out dough between two unbleached parchment papers (like this one!), do it!Heavy, stiff bleached parchment paper isn’t flexible. Your rolled-out dough will have a million wrinkles from plastic wrap. Brown unbleached parchment paper is ideal for this!
3. Touch lightly. If you’re rolling lots of creases and wrinkles into the dough, roll lightly and go over those spots again. A rolling pin. Non-pressing pin.
4. Cool it. Leave the dough in the parchment paper on a cutting board and chill in the fridge or freezer for a few minutes if it’s hard to cut. Cutting will be possible when it firms.
5. Peel off. Peel the dough and paper from under each shape after cutting it out. It prevents cut-out stretching or breaking during transfer.I’ll no-bake these cookies all summer, and I don’t want you to miss out! Watch the how-to video, read the tips, and gather your ingredients.
Ingredients and swaps
Dairy-free: Yay! I made these cookies dairy-free and they tasted and felt the same. Melt Vegan Butter is my favorite unsalted butter substitute. Make sure it’s room temperature before using in the recipe.
If Melt brand is unavailable, use half Spectrum nonhydrogenated vegetable shortening and half Earth Balance buttery sticks. Because Earth Balance is so moist, the cookies will fall apart if you use it all. Cookies with all shortening may be too dry.
Egg-free: Since this recipe only uses one egg, it works well with a “chia egg,” which is 1 tablespoon of ground white chia seeds mixed with 1 tablespoon lukewarm water and allowed to gel. You’ll have to try since I haven’t!
Cocoa powder: Chocolate wafer cookies require cocoa powder. You can use natural cocoa powder instead of Dutch-processed. Whisk in 1/8 teaspoon baking soda to the dry ingredients.
Sugar: I haven’t tried this recipe with granulated sugar, but I recommend Swerve or Lankato monk fruit. Since those sweeteners are drying, you may need to add a half teaspoon of water to get the dough to come together.