Alton Brown's Gluten Free Sugar Cookies

 

Christmas Cookies!

Let the screaming begin. Who doesn't get excited about Christmas cookies?

Maybe those that have a gluten intolerance. Like Santa Claus.

That's right, Santa is on a gluten free diet. Well at least the Santa portrayed on Alton Brown's Good Eats Reloaded. So Alton, being a man who would not want Santa to be left out, came up with a gluten free sugar cookie recipe.

I know someone who has Celiac disease and I thought it would be so fun to make these cookies for her and bring them to the decorating party we were already invited to.

Ok that's really just an excuse to try out a new Alton Brown recipe. I think it's a pretty valid one.

Recipe Notes

Let me share with you how this new recipe worked out for me.

The Gluten Free Flour Mix

1. The recipe calls for a custom made gluten free flour mix. It does sound like a good mix. It is a lot of ingredients to buy. If you have a good bulk food store or a grocery store that has a good bulk section you could buy what you need. Otherwise it's going to cost a lot to get all the ingredients.
2. I opted for using Jessica's Gluten Free All-Purpose. More on that in a moment.
3. If you do use your an already made gluten free flour, you will need to add non fat dry milk powder to it as that is included in Alton's mix.
4. The recipe calls for 440 grams of Alton's GF flour mix. I did the math, so you need 400g of any all-purpose gluten free flour mix and 40g non-fat dry milk.

Baking the Cookies

1. Alton calls for the dough to be refrigerated overnight in the fridge or at least for 6 hours. I put my dough in the fridge overnight. I should have pulled it sooner before I needed to bake the cookies as the dough is pretty hard to roll out until it has warmed up. So make sure to pull it from the fridge at least a half hour before rolling.
2. It was a little more challenging to determine when these cookies were done as they were naturally darker as the flour I used was more brown. The timing Alton gave of 15 minutes, with rotating half way through produced a perfectly cooked cookie for me.
3. The recipe calls for royal icing, which is great at all. I am perfectly happy with making a simple icing with just powdered sugar and water. Sometimes I will mix freeze dried fruit that I run through my food processor or citrus zest into the icing. That's some real fruit flavor right there.

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Jessica's Gluten Free All-Purpose Flour

Let me tell you more about Jessica's. I was originally turned onto them when a former co-worker shared with me their Chocolate Chip Granola. Best granola of all time. I can go on all day about how good it is.

Later on I was able to try Jessica's All-Purpose Gluten Free Flour in other cookie recipes and I was very pleased with it. It's the gluten free flour that I share with friends who need gluten free flour for themselves or a family member.

Jessica's gluten free flour is different in that it does NOT contain rice flour. There is concern among many that too much rice can be harmful. This flour blend includes Whole grain teff flour, certified gluten-free oat flour, tapioca flour, ground flax seed, xanthan gum.

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Recipe Review

My wife would describe them in three words : nutty, delicious, and buttery.

I would have to agree. I believe that these cookies were actually better than the original. The flour that was used added more flavor to the cookie than just plain old wheat flour. Even if you aren't gluten free, you should give these cookies a try.

Head over to Cooking Channel's website for the full recipe.

If you have tried this recipe yourself, I would love to hear from you. Leave a comment below.