Gluten free, dairy free, nut free Sugar Cookies!

Sugar cookies are pretty much the best baked treat around any holiday, and I found myself wanting to use some of my vintage cookie cutters to share the tradition of rolling out cookies, baking, and decorating with my 4yo. We recently discovered that my youngest has a severe treenut allergy so all my Paleo baking recipes pretty much went right out the window! My 4 year old son was adamant that we make cookies to gift to our friends and family this year after seeing it in a library book so I was left scrambling to find a new recipe! 

The trouble is, I am strictly gluten free, we are dairy free, and my daughter has anaphylactic allergies! She's allergic to chickpeas as well, so a lot of all purpose gluten free flour blends do not work. I wasn't able to completely find a recipe that would work for us, so I read a lot about tips, ideas, and substitutions and this is what I came up with! Thankfully I have a few friends who lead this allergy life and they were able to hold my hand through this process... Special thanks to Angie! 

Enough folks have asked me to share my recipe so here it is: a gluten free, dairy free, nut free rolled sugar cookie that tastes good. I wanted a large batch to give plenty away, but this recipe can easily be cut in half. Yields about 55 cookies. 

2 cup coconut oil, softened

1 3/4 cup organic raw granulated sugar

1/4 icing sugar

4 teaspoons gluten-free vanilla extract

2 large eggs

1 teaspoon salt

1 tsp baking powder

2 2/3 cup white rice flour 

1 1/3 cup tapioca starch 

1 1/3 cup potato starch (not flour) 

3 teaspoons xanthan gum

In a *very* large mixing bowl, beat the softened coconut oil and sugar on medium speed until fully incorporated. Reduce the speed to low and add the extracts and the egg. Mix just until blended.

In a separate mixing bowl, whisk together the salt, baking powder, rice flour, tapioca starch, potato starch, and xanthan gum.

Slowly add the dry ingredients, scraping down the bowl as necessary. Mix on low just until the dough comes together. My mixer had a tough time at first but the dough slowly came together.

Scrape the dough out onto a sheet of plastic wrap, and wrap tightly before refrigerating for at least 1 hour. I refrigerated overnight and my dough was rock solid the next day. I was able to warm it up and knead it out but... Do not recommend! 

When you are ready to bake, preheat your oven to 350 and line your baking sheets with parchment paper.

Working with a quarter of the dough at a time, roll the dough to about 3/8-inch thick. If the dough is sticky try. Dusting with icing sugar instead of flour. Cut to desired shapes and place on prepared baking sheets, leaving 2-inches between cookies. You can roll and cut directly on the parchment paper, then transfer the parchment paper to the cookie sheet. 

Re-roll the scraps until all the dough has been used. 

Bake in preheated oven for 10-14 minutes, depending on the size of your cookies. The cookies should just barely be turning brown around the edges, and have just a light brown colour on the bottom of the cookie.

Let cookies sit on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before removing to a cooling rack. Allow cookies to cool completely before decorating with icing or storing in an air-tight container.

We will be decorating our cookies with a dairy free glaze Christmas Eve morning, so I'll come back and add pictures of our finished product and a recipe for our vegan glaze. Until then enjoy your allergen-free sugar cookies! Xo