Everyone enjoys a good sugar cookie around Christmas time; however, if you have
Celiac Disease, this is a time of year that you dread. There are no gluten-free options, and if
there are, they are not safe for us to eat. Food has a social aspect to it, and it feels lonely not
being able to eat with everyone else. In this post, though, I will go over a gluten-free sugar
cookie recipe that I use all the time.
What is gluten-free, though? Gluten-free is anything sans gluten, or without wheat.
Celiac Disease is an autoimmune disorder whose trigger is gluten. In order to go into remission,
Celiacs need to eat a strict gluten-free diet. This includes cross contamination. Good gluten-free
recipes are hard to come by, but this is an easy one that tastes well. It is also easy to prepare.
As this is a family recipe, there are no links to external sites- but I assure you that it is just as
delicious.
Materials that you will need are as follows: cookie pan, spatula, rolling pin, cookie
cutters, cooling rack, oven mitts, cooking spray, 2 sticks of butter, 1.5 cups of sugar, a bag of
powdered sugar to use at your discretion, 2 eggs, 1 cup of buttermilk, 2 tsp vanilla, 5 cups of
gluten-free 1 to 1 flour, and 5 tsp baking powder.
It is important to use the 1 to 1 flour as it is the closest recipe to regular flour. That is so
that you will not have to mix and ratio different types of flours together.
Before you do anything, preheat the oven to 375 to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. A
preheated oven is key for these cookies.
First, you will cream the butter, sugar, and eggs together. Mix them until they are smooth
and creamy. A good tip for this is to ensure that the butter is room-temperature. Once the
mixture is creamy, add the buttermilk and eggs. Ensure that the new mixture is creamy as well.
Second, add the dry ingredients- flour and baking powder. Mix those until a cookie
dough forms, upon which you will grab the powdered sugar.
Empty the powdered sugar onto the workspace and roll the powdered sugar onto the
rolling pin. This is to ensure that the dough will not stick to the utensils and surfaces. Once the
surfaces and utensils are covered in powdered sugar, empty the dough out onto the surface.
Roll the dough out until there is a 1-inch height on all surfaces. Once the dough is rolled
out, use the cookie cutters to cut out the shapes you wish. Place 9-12 of them onto the cookie
tray, and place the cookie tray into the oven.
Set a timer for 6-8 minutes on the cookies. They bake fast, and they will look slightly
underdone when you pull them out- that is normal. Set them onto a cooling rack to cool them. If
you choose to, frost them when they are cool; otherwise, they are ready to eat.
Once you bite into the cookies, you will wonder whether or not they are gluten-free. They
are, and they taste just as delicious as the regular wheat-filled cookies. Gluten-free is important
to stick to if you have Celiac Disease, and this recipe makes it easier to do so and not miss out
Kammie Darnold- Slice of life 