My Annual Holiday Baking Extravaganza Part Six (a series...with recipes!)
In Which, There Wasn’t Going To Be A Part Six, Yet Here We Are
One of these snowflake cookies is gluten-free.
I am not a gluten-free person, but I have friends who are for a variety of reasons. And because I am a nice friend (I am! Honest!), I have played around with gluten-free baking on occasion, and other than the coconut macaroons (and let’s face it, you could probably put sawdust in those things and they would still be fine)(do not put sawdust in them though), I have never been satisfied with the results.
Gluten-free flour mixes are expensive. Even the ones you can concoct at home usually have 4 different flours, plus xanthan gum - and that really starts to add up! So I was surprised to see a simple - really simple - blend on The Kitchn, using rice flour and tapioca flour.
Two ingredients. And I already had the rice flour. In fact, I had white rice flour and brown rice flour and both of them had “best by” dates of…<checks bags>…<whispers> 2017.
Do I get fresh stuff when I am at the store getting the tapioca flour? Of course not.
Gluten-Free Flour Mix from The Kitchn
1 lb white rice flour
1/2 cup tapioca flour
Dump the flours into a bowl and whisk together. Measure out in same amounts as regular all-purpose flour in recipes.
I did not have a pound of white rice flour. So I did 1/2 lb white rice and 1/2 lb brown rice flour.
I used this mix in the chocolate sugar cookie recipe (also from The Kitchn). I figured the worst thing that would happen is the cookie would be too crumbly and maybe I would have to turn the dough into a pie crust or something.
Wait, that’s a lie. I figured the worst thing that could happen is that the chocolate cookie dough would taste terrible.
It didn’t. It was its usual delicious self. The texture was a bit grainier, which I would expect with rice flour. After chilling the dough for a couple hours, it was time for the ultimate test - baking test cookies. I made a couple of snowflakes and a star and popped them in the oven.
I also had a bit of royal icing leftover from my last decorating session. Am I doing everything wrong here? Yes. Yes I am. I gave it a stir, added some powdered sugar to half of it for piping (icing tends to thin out a bit after a day or two).
The snowflake cookie on the right is the gluten-free version. There is a texture difference in the gluten-free cookie that is minor (and some might prefer, actually) and the cookie spread maybe just a tad more but not enough, obviously, to ruin the shape.
I cannot show you the star, because I ate it.