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a simple real food recipe :: gluten free sugar cookies

This is such a fun time of the year to get into the kitchen with your family and create some memories! I have so many memories of Christmas cookie decorating as a kid.

Over the last year I committed to a completely gluten free diet for my family for various reasons, and so this Christmas I had to figure out how to do up the cut out cookies in a gluten free way. If you are able to tolerate gluten, you can also try this great soaked wheat sugar cookie – they are SO good 😉

This recipe actually turned out so well that gluten free or not, I would probably be making this recipe from here on out! I found a handful of recipes and tailored this to what I wanted it to look like.

I was gifted some real vanilla bean and used that as the vanilla in the cookie and it gave it the most beautiful flavor and gorgeous vanilla fleck in the cookies. They were good enough to eat on their own, but of course we did decorate them for fun! (See THIS post on how to decorate your cookies in a real food way!)

So grab these few simple ingredients and gather in the kitchen with your family for some fun this week!

a simple real food recipe :: gluten free sugar cookies

Author: Renee www.theSIMPLEmoms.com

Ingredients

• 1 cup softened butter (if dairy free use soft coconut oil)
• 1 cup organic pure cane sugar (could use sucanat but the color will come out darker)
• 1 egg (or 1 egg replacer egg if you are egg free)
• 1 tsp vanilla
• ¼ tsp sea salt
• ¼ tsp cinnamon
• 1 cup tapioca flour
• ½ cup white rice flour
• ½ cup sorghum flour
• 1 tsp xanthan gum (Do NOT leave this out – it helps the cookies rise. You will have a melted mess without it...I have the mess to prove it!)

Instructions

In a large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar.
Add the egg, vanilla, salt, and cinnamon, and blend.
Add the flours and xanthan gum. Mix until well combined.
Cover and refrigerate for 1 hour.
Take the dough out of the fridge, and let it come to room temp for about 30 minutes.
Lay out some parchment paper on the counter and flour it with white rice flour. Flour your hands and use the warmth of your hands to gently knead the dough.
Roll out the dough. (Use white rice flour on the rolling pin and parchment paper to keep the dough from sticking)
Cut out your shapes and bake on a silpat (or parchment paper) lined baking sheet at 350 degrees for 13-15 minutes. Check them around the 10 minute mark in case our ovens run different.
Let the cookies cool completely before decorating.

Kitchen Tips:

You can make the dough the night before if you wish – just makes the baking and decorating day go that much faster 😉
Switch up the gluten free flours if you want. Stick with the 1 cup of tapioca but play around with the rice and sorghum to what you have in house.
If you don’t plan to use frosting you could easily add in raisins (or other dried fruit), nuts, coconut shreds, etc to the plain cookies before baking them and the toppings will bake right in.
See THIS post for how to make naturally colored frosting and safe toppings for your cookies!
Here is where I get my tapioca flour, white rice flour, and sorghum flour. These make a great gluten free flour combo.
HERE are the Christmas cookie cutters I have! I like the bulky ones because they are easier for little hands to help with.
Invest in some silpat for your kitchen – it makes baking SO much easier/cleaner.

YOUR TURN!
What baking memories do you have as a kid growing up?

December 17, 2013 By Renee

About Renee

the real food hippie :: renee is married to her superman and mama to her 3 busy bees. she loves soaking up the sun, real butter, and julia child. her passion is helping people take baby steps to raise a real food generation in this world of highly processed food – one with healed guts, functioning minds, and solid health. she also blogs at Raising Generation Nourished. Find more of Renee on twitter pinterest and Google+.