Gluten Free [Cooking School]

This is the third of four posts on How to Bake Sugar Cookies. We’ve already learned how to cream butter and sugar, and performed some related experiments. This post will cover the basic Gluten Free Sugar Cookie recipe. And then after Christmas I’ll write a post on how to roll out the cookie dough. Yes, I know it would make sense to do that before Christmas, but I’ve just flat run out of time =)

The first blog post that I ever read about gluten free sugar cookies went on and on about how difficult it was to find a good flour mix for sugar cookies. By the time this individual was done with her recipe it had something like 16 ingredients and one of them was amaranth flour. I don’t know about you, but I’m not about to order amaranth flour for cookies that I would probably only make once a year.

Because of that post we haven’t had sugar cookies for four years. When I saw that post again this year it made me mad. Gluten free baking should not be that hard. Cookies don’t need gluten! I was fired up and ready to make a sugar cookie.

I dug around in my old cookbooks from my hometown. (These are the cookbooks that the local school or homemakers’ club publishes and to which all the great cooks in the area contribute. ) I found a simple recipe for “Gigi’s Sugar Cookies” from a lady I’ve know all my life. I decided to give it a shot. I mean, really, how bad can a recipe with a cup of sugar and a cup of butter be?

I gave some thought to the flour issue and decided to substitute my Gluten Free All Purpose Flour Mix for the plain flour in the original recipe. I love this flour mix because it doesn’t have a strong taste and all of the ingredients except for the brown rice flour are available at Wal-Mart. I figured at the worst, the cookies would be good but just wouldn’t taste exactly like the sugar cookies I grew up with. I must say, though, the results were really, really good. I don’t think that I’ll be changing this recipe any at all =)

Gluten Free Sugar Cookies

1 c. sugar
1 c. butter (2 sticks)
1 egg
2 1/2 c. Gluten Free Flour All Purpose Flour Mix
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. cinnamon (optional)

1. Cream the sugar and butter (for further direction click here).
2. With the mixer still on medium speed, add the egg. Mix until well combined.
3. Sift the Gluten Free Flour Mix, baking soda and cinnamon.
4. Add the dry ingredients to the batter and mix well.
5. Shape the dough into a ball and place between two sheets of wax paper that have been very lightly floured. Flatten the ball a bit, and then roll out the dough until it is 1/8 inch thick. (more on this next week, if you’re not sure how to proceed).
6. Move the rolled out dough to the refrigerator and chill for 15 minutes. Then remove the top layer of parchment paper and cut out your cookies with a cookie cutter.
7. Place the cookies on a greased sheet pan. Sprinkle them with sugar and then bake at 425 degrees for 8 minutes.

Tags: cookies