GF cookies for the holidays? Yes it can be done!

Husband forwarded me a question about which flour would be best to use for baking cookies. The twist on this is that the questioner wanted to try a cookie recipe that is cooked on a griddle for her GF relatives. Good for you- it will teach you about the fine art and science of cooking.

There isn’t really a best flour to use for cookies, it varies by recipe and the results you are looking for. For example, I would personally use a pre-mixed general GF flour (my favourite is Bob’s Red Mill but it’s rather pricey) because it’s already figured out for me and can be substituted pretty much 1 c for 1 c of regular white flour but that’s just my own laziness. I’m certainly not a maths major!  One could also buy an actual GF cookie mix. I have one of these at home I haven’t made yet but my best friend baked me a batch of chocolate chip cookies from one of these and they were excellent. BTW, Bob’s Red Mill products can be found either online in their store or at WholeFoods, Giant Eagle, Wal-Mart and Trader Joe’s.

As for specific individual flours and making your own mix to use, the following are generally used:

Nut flours (think the ground almond flour/meal used in Linzer Tarts)
Sweet Rice/White Rice/ Brown Rice (Rice flours make the dough/batter more smooth and less like that GF grittiness we all know and not particularly love)
Tapioca Starch/flour (very fine texture, thickens)
Gram/Soya flours- (used in small amounts and have a distinct taste not everyone is all that keen on)
Xanthan gum/Guar gum (check any packaged flour blends to make sure there is or isn’t this binding ingredient- if it’s not listed, make sure you add it)
Yeast (Check yeasts to make sure there is no contamination but Red Star brand states that they are gluten free)

Because I don’t have the questioner’s recipe right in front of me, I’m going to make some suggestions.  If the recipe needs to be rolled out such as sugar cookie dough, I generally use white or rice flour to roll the dough in. Sift all of your flours and dry ingedients; sometimes GF flours can clump. Store your GF flours and mixes in the refrigerator (or freezer) because these flours tend to expire quicker than white flour. If you’re trying for lighter cookies, I’d probably go with the rice and tapioca flours. Chewier- soya or gram flour (just remember that these flours will require more sugar to sweeten the dough). Denser- nut flours.

I’m going to include some decent GF flour recipes that can be substituted in regular recipes calling for white flour and also a GF recipe calling for a pre-mixed GF flour.
GF Flour Recipe 1
GF Flour Recipe 2
GF cookie recipe -sugar cookies

Sources: celiac.com, celiacdisease.about.com, glutenfreemommy