Recipe: Gluten free, sugar free, lactose free Shortbread Cookies
One of the things keeping me sane on this diet is a shortbread cookie recipe I've managed to cobble together by combining several different recipes I found and then trying different tweaks. The cookie turns out very rich, flaky, and crumbly - which is just find for shortbread. The texture is a bit coarser than you'd find with regular wheat flour, but I'm pretty happy with it.
This is not a vegan cookie, though you could very easily make it so. I use ghee, which is butter with the milk solids removed (hence lactose free), but you could use coconut oil instead and get similar results.
1 cup ghee
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup white rice flour
1/2 cup sorghum flour
1/4 cup millet flour
1/4 cup tapioca flour
1/2 tsp xanthan gum
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 and 1 tsp agave nectar
Mix thoroughly. Shape cookies on the cookie tray (I like mine fairly small and thin). Heat oven to 325. Cook 7 - 10 minutes according to preference. They'll be more solid and less flaky at the lower end. I like the flavor and flakiness at the higher end better.
(Edited to add: After further experimenting, I have to say that refrigerating the dough for a few hours before baking massively improves the cookie texture. The outside remains flaky and crumbly, while the inside is softer and meltier. The texture is still more coarse than regular flour, so don't be surprised at that.)
One variation that I really like involves toasting the ghee, or burning it as Navarre likes to say. It adds a subtle caramel flavor to the cookies.
The xanthan gum is the binding agent, which I use instead of eggs. The agave nectar works beautifully as an alternate sweetener. Mind you, it's still a sugar, but it has a lower glycemic index and doesn't trigger my blood sugar spikes.
This is not a vegan cookie, though you could very easily make it so. I use ghee, which is butter with the milk solids removed (hence lactose free), but you could use coconut oil instead and get similar results.
1 cup ghee
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup white rice flour
1/2 cup sorghum flour
1/4 cup millet flour
1/4 cup tapioca flour
1/2 tsp xanthan gum
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 and 1 tsp agave nectar
Mix thoroughly. Shape cookies on the cookie tray (I like mine fairly small and thin). Heat oven to 325. Cook 7 - 10 minutes according to preference. They'll be more solid and less flaky at the lower end. I like the flavor and flakiness at the higher end better.
(Edited to add: After further experimenting, I have to say that refrigerating the dough for a few hours before baking massively improves the cookie texture. The outside remains flaky and crumbly, while the inside is softer and meltier. The texture is still more coarse than regular flour, so don't be surprised at that.)
One variation that I really like involves toasting the ghee, or burning it as Navarre likes to say. It adds a subtle caramel flavor to the cookies.
The xanthan gum is the binding agent, which I use instead of eggs. The agave nectar works beautifully as an alternate sweetener. Mind you, it's still a sugar, but it has a lower glycemic index and doesn't trigger my blood sugar spikes.