Holiday Cut-Out Cookies

Just getting caught up here... I've made so much stuff and hardly had time to post. Seems a little bit ironic.

Anyway, these cookies turned out pretty well, given my previous experiences with gluten-free cookies. I used a recipe, too, from Land O'Lakes. But I made a few changes. Since I don't pre-mix a gluten-free flour blend, I just use specific amounts of each kind of flour.

These are cookies you should probably eat within a few days, because they will dry out quickly after that and are prone to crumbling into little pieces... but hey. They're delicious. If you like soft, sweet, frosted cut-out cookies, that is... and I know I do.

HOLIDAY CUT-OUT COOKIES
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 egg yolks
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups white rice flour
1/2 cup potato starch
1/4 cup tapioca starch
3/4 tsp xanthan gum
1/4 tsp salt

1. Combine flours, xanthan gum, and salt in a medium bowl or on a piece of waxed paper and set aside.

2. Cream butter and sugar in a large bowl at medium speed, scraping often (I ran out of butter so I used half butter, half non-hydrogenated shortening) until light and fluffy and beautiful. Add egg yolks and vanilla, and continue beating until well-mixed, scraping down sides of bowl as needed.

3. Reduce speed to low and add flour mix, beating until incorporated. Divide dough in half, flatten into 4-inch disks, wrap and refrigerate 1 hour.

4. Preheat oven to 350°F. Generously rice-flour a work surface (if you don't have enough, the cookies will stick). Roll out one disk of dough to 1/4-inch thickness.



Using 2 1/2-inch cookie cutters of your choice, cut out pieces of dough and transfer them to an ungreased cookie sheet (add sprinkles now if you want). Place them at least 1 inch apart. This is where I goofed, and the cookies I put too close together started kissing in the oven. Sigh.



5. Bake 8-12 minutes or until edges are lightly browned (this took me 16-17 minutes in an accurate oven). Let rest 2 minutes on cookie sheets, then transfer with a metal spatula onto cooling racks. Cool completely before frosting.

6. I'd tell you what the frosting is made of... but I didn't write it down. Heavy cream, shortening, and powdered sugar... for the pumpkins I added some pumpkin puree, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and cloves, and for the chocolate I added melted bittersweet chocolate... But the ratios? Heck if I know. Anyway, pick a nice frosting recipe that you like (butter really is better for this, but I ran out). Frost those cookies. Decorate away. Buy one of those tubs of frosting if you really want to sacrifice all your hard work only to use canned frosting. They're your cookies... No pressure :)





PROS: so soft... and they actually hold their shape in the oven! As long as they're rolled thin enough, anyway. GREAT with frosting. If you hand them out, you'll have no trouble finishing off a batch in a couple of days.
CONS: A bit crumbly... and difficult to brown. The shape kinda gets a little muddled, but you can still tell what it is, especially if you use something like a pumpkin or a Christmas tree. Not so good for little details, though.

I made pumpkins (with pumpkin frosting), ghosts (with vanilla frosting), bats, and cats (with chocolate frosting). Sense a theme here? :)

I'll probably make a few changes next time. Like use Cook's Illustrated's "reverse creaming" method they recommend for holiday cut-out cookies. Definitely use all butter instead of half-shortening. Use a real recipe for frosting... like the vanilla and chocolate buttercream recipes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. Put them further apart on the baking sheet.

I'm so silly...