Tips for Fabulous Gluten-Free Cookies!

Compiled by Sylvie Ryan, our Culinary Educator

What I love most about cooking is the infinite creativity it inspires. Baking, however, is a very precise science, so it’s important to have a specific, well-measured recipe to help you achieve delicious results. And, when it comes to baking gluten-free cookies, I've discoverd some excellent tips that will ensure success!
Mary Frances from the Gluten Free Cooking School blog has tons of incredibly helpful information, and I've listed here 5 of her very best cookie baking tips and a great sugar cookie recipe, too. Be sure to sign up for her newsletter when you visit her blog!

Did you know that gluten is very rarely necessary in a good cookie? This also means that most gluten-free cookies can be made without xanthan gum or guar gum. A little of these ingredients might help with crumbliness, but they are not an essential ingredient like they would be with a bread recipe. Here are 5 more tips that I picked up during my cookie research this week:

1. Remove cookies from the baking sheet and onto a cooling rack as soon as they can be moved without breaking. They will continue to cook while they are on the sheet and, as I can personally attest, will become stuck. Instead, check them to see whether the cookies are ready to be moved every 30 seconds after they come out of the oven.

2. A good general rule is that you should always grease your cookie sheet with shortening, butter, or a non-stick spray (make sure that it doesn't contain flour). Alternatively, you can cover the sheet with parchment paper and bake the cookies on top of that.

3. If your cookies are too domed, try adding baking soda to the recipe in 1/4 tsp. increments. Baking soda will help increase the spread of the cookie as long as the recipe also includes an acidic ingredient like honey, brown sugar, or cream cheese.

4. Any number of things can cause a cookie to spread too much, and the problem isn't specific to gluten-free cookies. If this happens, consider whether your flour measurement was incorrect. Volume measurements (like cups) are notoriously inaccurate, and if you did not measure out enough flour then the fat in the recipe overwhelms the flour and the cookies' structure is not able to form.

5. Cool cookie sheets completely between batches to prevent the pan from warming the dough to much. A warm cookie sheet can cause the cookies to flatten and spread. Use several cookie sheets so that you can rotate through them as you bake batches of cookies.


A Gluten-Free Sugar Cookie for Decorating

1/2 lb (2 sticks) Butter, softened

2/3 cup Sugar

1 large Egg

1/4 tsp. Baking Powder

1/8 tsp. Salt

1-1/2 tsp. Vanilla Extract

2-1/2 c. Mary's Gluten-Free, All-Purpose Flour Mix

Cream the butter and sugar. Add the egg, baking powder, salt and vanilla and mix until well combined. Then stir in the flour until well-blended and smooth.

Divide the dough in half and roll out each half to 1/4 in. thickness between two sheets of parchment paper. Keeping the paper in place, move the dough to the refrigerator and chill for 20 - 30 minutes.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Move one oven rack to the upper third of the oven. Grease your cookie sheets.

Take one portion of dough out of the refrigerator. Peel one piece of parchment paper off and then replace it. This is now the bottom side of your dough. Take off the other piece of paper and discard. Cut out the cookies using cookie cutters that are 2 - 3 in. long. Place the cut-out cookie on the cookie sheet about 1 inch apart. Roll out the dough scraps and keep cutting cookies until all the dough has been used. Refrigerate the dough again if it gets too soft to handle.

Bake the cookies just until they are lightly colored and slightly darker at the edges - should be around 6 - 9 minutes. Rotate the cooking sheet halfway through baking for even browning. After they are done, transfer them to a cooling rack as soon as possible.