A Versatile Cookie Recipe

Don't they look good...

With the holidays coming I am playing around in the kitchen, trying new recipes and changing up ones I know work. A few years ago I found a really good gluten free basic cookie recipe on Celiac.com when I was looking to create gluten free holiday cookies. Since then I have adapted them in different variations. It is classified as a sugar cookie, but when baked crisp almost has the taste of a shortbread. The thicker the cookies the softer they will be. If you wish a nice crisp cookie, roll the dough out to 1/8 - 1/4 inch thick and cut your cookies out and bake for twice as long.

Soft Sugar Cookies (Gluten-Free)

By Scott Adams

Published 12/26/2007, Found on Celiac.com

Ingredients:
2/3 cup shortening [I use butter for all my baking instead of shortening]
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
4 teaspoons milk
2 cups gluten free flour [I use Bette Hagman's original gluten free flour mix]
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon xanthan gum

Directions:
Cream first 3 ingredients, then add egg and beat until light and fluffy. Stir in milk. Stir together dry ingredients and blend into creamed mixture. Divide dough in half and chill for one hour [or longer until the dough is stiff].

Roll (slightly thick) out on lightly gluten free flour surface (You may need a little gluten free flour on the rolling pin if it sticks). Bake on greased cookie sheet 6-8 minutes at 375F (I used parchment paper and just pulled off the parchment paper and let them cool on the parchment paper on a cooling rack). Be careful as the cookies are fragile when warm.

As it is a simple cookie recipe it can be changed up in different ways depending on what you wish them to taste like. I originally made them plain, and decorated a few with a citrus sugar on top. To make citrus sugar zest a lemon, orange, tangerine or lime into a small bowl with 1/2 cup of white sugar. Stir together and let sit for an hour or so for the flavors to develop and the sugar to dry slightly. Store unused sugar in an air tight container.

I have made them plain, rolled out and cut with star cookie cutters. Then decorated with a thick, coloured icing to look like snowflakes.

To give a maple flavor to the cookies I changed the vanilla extract to maple extract and decorated the top with turbinado/raw sugar mixed with maple sugar.

This time I took a different twist. I added the zest of 2 large naval oranges to the dry mix. As well I substituted 4 tsp of freshly squeezed orange juice for the 4 tsp of milk and changed the vanilla extract to a couple drops of lemon extract. Rolled the cookie dough into 2 2" thick logs and chilled them in the fridge for 2 hours. I sliced the log into 1/8 - 1/4 thick slices and placed them on a parchment lined cookie sheet. Bake 6-8 minutes for a soft chewy cookie and 18-20 minutes for a crisp cookie. Once the cookies cooled I melted a good quality dark (70% cocoa) chocolate bar and dipped the cookies into the chocolate to cover the tops. 1/2 of the cookie dough made approximately 24 cookies, with another log to keep in the freezer for later use. A friend commented that these cookies were addictive.