The Ultimate Gluten-Free Cookie Book (3 page)

Gingerbread Men and Gingersnaps, page 81

 

And, let us not forget the irony of giving a person with a sensitive immune system a flour blend that contains several flours that are among the top eight allergens in the United States,
¹
for instance, tree nuts (e.g., almonds) or soybeans. And dare we further consider people with multiple food allergies, such as to dairy, eggs (both also among those top eight allergens), and corn? Does this make sense?

Alternatively, we have a simple solution. Use just one flour and use it in ratios that make sense. Don’t just take a regular recipe and substitute the flour cup for cup. Instead, I’ve developed recipes that embrace and maximize that flour’s unique characteristics and baking properties. Let’s stop treating an apple like a banana!

I have listened closely to food concerns from the gluten-free community. In my first book,
The Gluten-Free Kitchen
, great taste was the primary goal (and of course, remains so today). I utilized cornstarch and potato starch to make foods that closely resembled their traditional counterparts. It was my goal to make the reader eat safely, not feel deprived, and finally, eat other nutritious foods to round out a healthy diet.

The recipes in my second book,
You Won’t Believe It’s Gluten-Free!
utilized one flour at a time to create almost any food desired. Cornstarch alone, potato starch alone, rice flour alone, and oat flour alone. It provided the reader with an opportunity to figure out what suited their taste buds and their gut. It also provided a huge array of everyday foods from appetizers to desserts.

My third major work, as contributing food writer for
Eating for Autism
, pushed my gluten-free food making knowledge to the limits. Nutritious, dairy-free, soy-free, corn-free, refined sugar-free, etc. It forced me to rethink our gluten-free base flours once again. Ultimately a combination of brown
rice flour and sorghum became a new proving ground for the special dietary guidelines suggested in this work. It was groundbreaking and delicious.

And, that brings us to today. I am delighted to tell you that the recipes in
The Ultimate Gluten-Free Cookie Book
primarily use brown rice flour or sorghum flour. Most often they are used just one at a time. If you had asked me as little as two years ago if any heavy flour could be used to make a cookie that is light and fluffy, such as whoopie pies, I would have said, “Impossible.” Today I know it is a reality!

Exploiting the unique characteristics of each of these flours makes “light and fluffy” possible. Also, “tender and crisp.” The same goes for “soft and tender.” These cookie qualities are all possible using nearly
any
flour (or any blend, for that matter). The final chapter in this book uses other flours solo to make that point. Hopefully, those recipes will also enable you to use up that cupboard full of alternatives fondly called a tower of flours!

For good taste, great textures, good nutrition, and reasonable affordability, I am embracing the wonderful and hard-to-believe attributes of brown rice flour and sorghum flour.

From the CSA/USA Web site (
www.csaceliacs.org
), I gathered five well-known blend formulas. From the Bob’s Red Mill Web site (
www.bobsredmill.com
), I gathered pricing information for types of flours sometimes used in gluten-free baking. The point in gathering this information is to show how purchase of multiple flours can quickly become quite an expense (not to mention utilize cabinet space!)
²

Alternatively, a 1.5-pound bag of brown rice flour or sorghum flour costs about $3.00, or roughly $0.70 per cup.

And, finally, factor in the ratios of flours used. Blends are often substituted cup for cup; not so for my single-flour recipes. For example, a traditional chocolate cake may call for 1¾ cups of flour in addition to the cocoa. Two versions of chocolate cakes (in
You Won’t Believe It’s Gluten-Free!
) use just 3/4 cup of potato starch or 1 cup of rice flour. Food science tells us that our ratios do not need to mirror the rules of traditional baking. Gluten-free flours should have their own rules!

Obviously, we don’t need to spend a lot on flours to bake delicious treats! Specifically, we only need one flour (or two if you like), a package of xanthan gum (used in very small quantity, so it lasts for a long time), and an adventurous spirit.

We don’t need more blends. We don’t need all of our nutritional needs met with unusual-tasting pseudograins. We don’t need yet another flour discovery. We need common sense. Let us enjoy the whole-grain goodness of brown rice flour and sorghum flour.
³
This book lets you set aside venturing into many flour directions (and avoid the, shall we say, interesting taste of many), and make some great cookies!

The cookie recipes in this book are, for the most part, quite easy to make. There is science behind the ratios, the choice of ingredients, and the order in which the ingredients are mixed.

To ensure success, first, measure the ingredients carefully. A scale provides more accurate measurements, but is not essential. Combine the sugar and fat and mix well. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.

Add the flour and mix well. This step is critical, even though your dough just looks like crumbles in the mixing bowl. Essentially, you are coating the individual flour particles with fat, thereby deterring the flour from stealing moistness from the finished cookie. This simple step greatly extends the moistness-life of any gluten-free cookie (or any other baked good for that matter!). This step also helps a cookie to retain its intended character. (For example, a crisp cookie can become soft in a day if this step is not followed!)

Add the remaining ingredients as directed. You don’t have to worry too much about overbeating the batter as there is no gluten in our flours. It is the gluten that develops in traditional flour when you overbeat it, which can make a cookie tough. However, excess beating may cause increased viscosity of the xanthan gum, making the finished cookie hold shape a little stronger than desired. But the taste and texture should not change!

For rolled cookies, I strongly recommend a lightly oiled surface and rolling pin. We don’t want to add any dryness (flour) to the exterior of our cookies! Gluten-free cookie dough may require a small amount of shaping with moist fingertips to have finished results that mirror their traditional counterparts.

Bake at the recommended temperature. Do not be tempted to speed along baking with a higher temperature. Browning and spread are both affected by temperature!

Finally, it is best to avoid substitutions in a recipe. If you can, try the recipe as written the first time and venture from there. The helpful hints that follow should help you as you become more adventurous in your baking.

With each new cookbook I write, unwritten rules of gluten-free food theory become clear. I first disclosed a set of gluten-free food theories and helpful hints while speaking at a celiac conference in Dallas. It was my most popular handout, and requests for copies even followed me home. Following are my latest gluten-free cookie baking theories and helpful hints.

1. Shortening makes for the crispest cookie. Butter makes for the richest and even a little softer cookie. Oil makes for a crisp and tender cookie. These are subtle differences, but very important depending upon the desired result.

2. Coating a flour with fat first dramatically extends the moisture-life of the baked item.

3. Use margarine with at least 80 percent fat if substituting for butter.

1. Sweeteners entirely change a cookie. Sugar makes for a dryer cookie. Honey makes for a soft cookie.

2. Sugar can be baked at a higher temperature than honey without burning. If using honey and you want a crisp cookie, you need a low temperature for a much longer time.

3. Honey tastes sweeter than corn syrup.

4. In some cookies, such as the animal crackers, you would think that you’d want sugar to produce that nice crisp texture. Not when you are baking with brown rice flour; using sugar throws you into a sugar cookie taste and texture. You must have honey, which adds the complication of how to get a cookie that’s soft, but dry. Yes, I know they are crisp, but the starting dough is soft and the edges need to soften when baking. The honey also makes for tenderness.

1. Egg-free cookies benefit from additional moist ingredients such as pumpkin or applesauce.

2. Using honey or corn syrup makes eggs less necessary in a recipe.

1. Tenderness is achieved with rice flour by using oil as the fat.

2. Rice flour carries the flavor of butter extraordinarily well, so less butter can be used.

3. Peanut butter must be viewed as both a fat and a flour. To oversimplify, consider 50 percent by volume as fat and 50 percent as solids (the latter, as you would a flour).

4. Lighten a recipe by using starch in place of some of the gritty flour. Or use extra egg whites, leavening, etc.

1. Gluten-free dough wants to bind itself to fillings or toppings. While cookies will still be delicious assembled together, prebaking can help maintain the separateness of components. A gluten-free dough that has corn syrup as the sweetener is not as likely to bind itself to fillings. (See the Rugalach recipe, page 138.)

2. Cornstarch as a thickener is not as effective in the presence of an acid (such as lemon).

3. Xanthan gum does not exhibit strong binding properties when egg yolks are the only “liquid” in a recipe.

4. Xanthan gum exhibits stronger binding properties to a water-based liquid than to oil. (This may be the reason some of you notice a spongier texture in commercially available mixes, when replacing part of the fat with applesauce—acting as a water-based liquid.)

5. Xanthan gum exhibits stronger binding properties to corn syrup than to honey.