Hi, wondering if any of my Straight Dope friends have some good recipes for gluten-free Christmas cookies?
This is my first Christmas on a gluten-free regimine and I am not happy with the one recipe that I have tried for the gluten-free butter spritz cookies-they were really dry and heavy and hard to swallow.
I am feeling so great on my gluten free diet that I don’t want to cheat so I was hoping to get some good recommendations from my friends here at the Straight Dope.
I have to bake my regular cookies for family as they are traditional but I want some yummy treats for myself too! Thought that I would ask here as I can’t find anything yummy on my own. I have just about every variety of gluten free flour so I should be ready to go.
Meringues don’t have any gluten. They’re just egg whites, cream of tartar, and sugar, plus flavoring of your choice. With chocolate chips, peppermint, etc, they can be quite festive and tasty.
My first gluten free cookie recipe was for these peanut butter cookies. Although the page says it is necessary, I did not use the coarse salt. I could see using sprinkles instead to make them more festive looking.
The recipe seems remarkably similar to Hello Again’s almond cookies, actually. But I bet peanut butter is a little easier to find than almond paste.
Would you be interested in a cookie recipe that is gluten free, but not specifically Chritmasy? I have this recipe that I use at work, One item in it is M&M’s, so we are currently mixing in packages of red and green M&M’s to go with the season. I will post the recipe. If some of the ingredient amounts seem wonky, it’s because I had to scale this way down, as I typically make a batch that has fourteen eggs.
Place all the ingredients, except for the candies, in a mixing bowl and beat them together. So it would be easiest to have the butter softened first. When ingredients are well mixed stir in the candies. Scoop into balls and place on baking sheet, and flatten the balls.( use a pan lines with parchment paper, to keep from messing up the pan so fast) Bake in a medium oven until done, perhaps ten minutes or so.
I’m Jewish, so maybe I don’t “get it” but how would a cookie recipe “not be specifically christmassy.” Just curious - I thought Christmas cookies = any grouping of awesome yummy cookies. Every family seems to have a different customary selection.
Anyhoo, I looked at Passover recipes for inspiration (Passover = no grain flour allowed*) and there’s one I can’t believe I forgot – Coconut Macaroons, of course!
*If you look for Passover recipes yourself just be wary – some Passover recipes use ground matzo as a binder, which obvs, is NOT gluten-free, its made of flour.
King Arthur Flour has a page of Gluten-free cookies and bars, including gingerbread. Be aware that most of the recipes call for the King Arthur Flour gluten-free flour blend, but you could probably substitute other non-wheat flours.
Oatmeal is naturally gluten-free (oats don’t have gluten). So, try any type of oatmeal cookie. My brother makes a killer oatmeal lace cookie; perhaps there’s a good recipe for that on the web somewhere.
Note that while oatmeal is naturally gluten-free, it can’t be labeled that way because it may be processed by machinery that also processes wheat-based products, and there might be trace amounts. So, try to figure out what your gluten tolerance is. If it’s zero-tolerance, you’d need to find oats labeled gluten-free. But, most folks who avoid gluten can tolerate trace amounts, and normal oats would be fine.
You might want to look at Jewish and Middle Eastern cookbooks generally: this recipeis gluten- and dairy-free, and really simple to make if you have a food processor. (I love the book it’s from, generally.)
Thank you all so much for the great ideas and recipes! Seems like there are plenty of goodies for me to make this week. I really appreciate you all taking the time to post these and this is a great start to my gluten free cookie recipe box. No need for me to feel left out after all lol.
I think rice krispie treats qualify, if you consider them cookies. Red and green sprinkles, sugars or marshmallows would make them festive and they can be cut with cookie cutters.
The ingredients of flour substitute make a big difference. Use a rice flour-based mix, or straight rice flour, rather than ones based on beans (Bob’s Red Mill Gluten-Free mix is largely garbanzo-bean flour and tastes very bitter). The cookies I’ve made using rice flour were indistinguishable from wheat flour.