Gluten free sugar cookie recipe?

November 18, 2007 11:07 AM

I need help finding a gluten free sugar cookie recipe.

A friend of mine had to switch to a gluten free diet and is having a rough time of it. What he wants to do is recreate the holiday meal he's had previously but that won't make him sick, and the thing he wants most is to bake sugar cookies that won't make him sick.

Anyone have a recipe for gluten free sugar cookies? Or as close to sugar cookies as possible?

posted by FunkyHelix to food & drink (13 answers total)

There's a recipe for sugar cookies here at Gluten-free Girl, Shauna Ahern's website. She has a book; it'd make a nice present for your friend.
posted by ikkyu2 at 11:13 AM on November 18, 2007

Thank you so much for the recipe and idea.
posted by FunkyHelix at 11:36 AM on November 18, 2007

Don't thank me, thank Shauna. For us gluten-challenged folks she has been a godsend.
posted by ikkyu2 at 11:51 AM on November 18, 2007

Pattycake has lots of (very tasty) healthy baking recipes, including some gluten-free ones.
posted by avocet at 12:09 PM on November 18, 2007

Shauna's recipe calls for "your favorite gluten-free flour." Here's a good one from Bob's Red Mill. Bob's also has a gluten-free brownie mix that rivals any ordinary brownie recipe (as well as tons of other gluten-free products).
posted by peep at 12:12 PM on November 18, 2007

I would recommend trying out any recipes ahead of time to get a feel for flours, oven, humidity, etc since even if he is a baker all the variables are different now. These brownies from Shauna's website I'm eating right now are fantastic, but only portable by means of spoon. My oven is crap, but they really did look done when I baked them, and then re-baked them, and then gave up and went for the spoon.
posted by Lyn Never at 12:57 PM on November 18, 2007

If you can get past the pretentious writing from Shauna Ahern you're a better person than I am.

My niece has Celiac and my SIL has had lots of luck with Celiac.com, and this website from the Children's Hospital of Boston, along with Vegan Lunch Box (while not always gluten-free, a lot of the recipes use alternative flours and grains, and they're really really good).
posted by cooker girl at 3:52 PM on November 18, 2007

I love Bette Hagman recipes... I haven't tried this, but your friend may want to take his usual recipe and then substitute GF flour and add a little xanthan gum to it to make it all stick together. It's worth the experiment if he can modify a favorite family recipe!

I've also had a tremendous amount of luck with Namaste mixes. Their spice cake yields a carrot cake that none of my gluten-consuming friends can tell is GF and the muffins are divine. Perhaps their Cookie mix will turn out just as well?

Oh, and my favorite brownies are those from Gluten-free Pantry.
posted by raintea at 4:38 PM on November 18, 2007

If you can get past the pretentious writing from Shauna Ahern you're a better person than I am.

Yeah, I probably would have felt the same way, before I learned that I would never enjoy sourdough bread, cake, donuts, or a beer again. Puts a different face on it.
posted by ikkyu2 at 7:13 PM on November 18, 2007

For GF flour: I've used the Bob's GF flour mix for a variety of things, and I can't stand it. It tastes like garbanzo beans. I do not want my chocolate chip cookies to have that flavor; I imagine it'd be even more intense in a sugar cookie. (My girlfriend, who is the gluten-free one, and my daughter both thought the cookies were fine, so YMMV.)

If there are no nut allergies to deal with, I'd experiment with a mix of rice and nut flours.
posted by expialidocious at 12:46 PM on November 19, 2007

I certainly didn't mean to offend, ikkyu2. My SIL has been dealing with Celiac for 12 years now, all of them without Shauna Ahern. Speaking as someone with culinary training, her recipes at best need to be deciphered before use (see "use your favorite gluten-free flour") and at worse are usually disasters that need to be "fixed" before they come close to working. I have no doubt that any help living gluten-free is better than no help at all; I just think there are better sources.

FunkyHelix, I meant to add before that your friend may benefit from a consultation with a dietician well-versed in gluten-free diets. If he lives near a decent culinary school or college with a dietetics program, he might be able to speak to someone at little to no cost to him.
posted by cooker girl at 2:04 PM on November 19, 2007

Certainly no offense taken. Gluten-free is still new to me and sometimes it feels a little lonely; I am still struggling to deal with it. If you wanted to send all your resources to my MeFi mail account or post them here I'd sure find them useful.

I agree with a lot of the above about the gluten-free flour. Bob's Red Mill behaves the most like real flour I've been able to find, but it tastes like chickpeas to me too. That's because it's made partly of chickpeas. Bean cake is not exactly my favorite thing in a cookie. I've been using teff flour but its flavor is a little less nutty and it's definitely too gritty and not sticky enough for recipes that need the sticky/binding aspect of gluten.

At one point in my amateur cooking career when I was making breads, cakes, sauces and pastries regularly I had 12 different (gluten-containing) flours on hand. I guess this makes me a bit of a flour snob and honestly sometimes when I consider the options that are out there for gluten-free I just throw up my hands and mutter an expletive. Shauna's writing is very good for me at combating this attitude, which any way you look at it is a bad attitude.
posted by ikkyu2 at 5:22 PM on November 19, 2007

ikkyu2, I think chestnut flour might be what you need for dessert baking. We tried a cake mix that was really good - it's Dowd & Rogers Dark Vanilla mix. The flour is a blend of white rice, chestnut, and tapioca flours. I will be experimenting in the future with this combination to figure out some good proportions for different cake recipes.
posted by expialidocious at 5:37 PM on November 19, 2007