GFCF Egg-Free Soy-Free Sugar Cookies

Yesterday afternoon I had the best time baking sugar cookies with my friend Holly! I've possibly consumed too many cookies in the last twenty-four hours, but you only live once! I'm doing much better on my diet restrictions than I did last year during {Thanksgiving and Christmas}. We made these sugar cookies without gluten, dairy, eggs, or soy, and they taste great! Then we frosted and decorated them just like we did growing up with moms that were into baking. All I have to say about this is: I love baking new allergy-friendly recipes that turn out!

A little sample of the cookies

Here is the recipe:

Old-Fashioned Sugar Cookies (Revised)

Author unknown

1 cup rice flour

3/4 cup tapioca flour

3/4 cup cornstarch

2 1/2 teaspoons xanthan gum

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup sugar

1 cup shortening

1 egg or 1/4 cup liquid egg substitute (*I used Ener-G Egg Replacer)

2 teaspoons vanilla

1/4 cup (or more) potato starch flour for kneading

Colored sugars, sprinkles, or frosting for decorating (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a small bowl, whisk together the flours, cornstarch, xanthan gum, and salt. Set aside.

In a mixing bowl, cream the sugar and shortening. Beat in the egg and vanilla. Add the dry ingredients, mixing enough to combine. The dough should form a soft ball. (*At this point, the dough was very crumbly and dry. If you run into this problem, add rice milk in small amounts until moist and workable.) With your hands, knead in enough of the potato starch flour to make the dough easy to handle and roll out.

Working with half at a time, place a piece of plastic wrap over the ball and roll out to about 1/8 inch thickness. Cut into desired shapes and place on cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. (Without it, the cookies stuck to the sheet.) Decorate with colored sugars before baking, or use frosting to decorate after baking if desired. (With this dough you can use all the scraps. Just scrape them together and roll out again. They will not get tough.)

Bake for about 13 minutes, but check for done-ness at 10 minutes. Cool very slightly before removing from cookie sheet. Makes 3 dozen 2 1/2-inch cookies.

More pretty cookies

Here is the glaze recipe:

Basic Icing

1 cup powdered sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla extract (or peppermint, orange, almond, etc.)

Rice milk, fruit juice or liquer (enough to make it desired consistency)

*For chocolate frosting, add 2 Tbs unsweetened cocoa powder

Whisk together sugar (and cocoa if using), extract and milk by gradually adding liquid until the frosting is consistency you need for your cookies. My two bowls (one of white vanilla, and one of pink almond) came out more like a glaze or icing than a frosting. It was very pretty, had a great tackiness for embellishing, and sweet.

Photo credits all to my husband. I especially love this one!

Angels, stars, snowmen... white pearls, sugar crystals... red snowflake plate... I'm in a Christmas mood!