Making sugar cookies from scratch. Gluten free. without a recipe.

I should say, recipe for disaster.

Let me preface this post with "I am not Suzy Homemaker"- I'm not even her distant cousin. I love to bake, and I am usually decent at it, when I am marginally following a recipe.

Today, I decided to throw all caution into the wind and replicate the sugar cookies from a box that we had a few weeks ago. The cookies were goooood... but they were $6 a box for about a dozen and a half cookies, so I just couldn't bring myself to buy another box. I tried to remember the appropriate ratio of wet-to-dry ingredients, and may have sneaked a peak at the back of the box last time I was at Econo Foods.

So I started with a stick of Jilbert's butter (that's half a cup), a quarter-cup of Jilbert's skim milk, and two eggs. Beat this with my Kitchenaid and streamed in ~1c cane sugar. I then mixed the dry ingredients in a bowl- 1/2c Bob's brown rice flour, 1/2c tapioca flour, and 1/2c cornstarch, with ~1tbsp potato starch. I flaked off the insides of one vanilla bean, and added another 3/4c or so of cane sugar to the mix. Mixed the dry into the wet ingredients, and the soupy-mix was scooped into spoonfuls onto a greased baking sheet. Baked at 375F.

Try #1- Cookie Smudged.
The cookies completely converged. The cookie sheet was just a smear of cookie mess. Tasted good though.

Try #2- added about a 1/2c rice flour to the mix. Re-scooped on the cookie sheet. The cookies still smeared a lot, but looked ok... until I tried to take them off the cookie sheet. That's the way the cookies crumbled.

Try #3- Chillin' the dough. I threw the dough in the fridge for a good half hour. Didn't change a damn thing.

So, anyone got any ideas? What did I do wrong?!
It's worth noting that I love cookie dough and cookie crumbs, so it wasn't a total waste!

6 comments:

Jamie said...

What about baking soda(or powder, I can't remember which one)?

An old roomie used to always make cookies, but refused to use baking soda and her cookies always got runny and flat. They were more like chocolate chip crackers than cookies.

Unknown said...

I have no idea. I am a failure at baking, at least you gave it a try!

David said...

I know this may be cheating, but I have found pumpkin as a great (low-GI) base for gluten-free sweets.

Then eggs, baking soda, and a little bit of soy flour for binding (along with tasty stuff). I role play as Suzy Homemaker :)

Amy Reinink said...

This cracked me up! I'm not a gluten-free baker, so I can't provide any helpful tips. I can only commiserate with the no-recipe experiment, which is always fun with cooking, sometimes disastrous with baking!

Maggs said...

If you figure out the recipe please post it. I've never tried to bake anything gluten free, but the bakery near my house makes gluten free cookies that I buy and I keep thinking I should just make some.

brooks shoes said...

that's nice to know! Maybe I should try that also! :)