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Gluten-free thumbprint cookies so good you won’t miss the gluten
Cookies, cookies, cookies! I can’t believe I didn’t get a chance to blog about the story I did last week about a cookie swap in Elgin that has been going for more than 15 years and draws about 45 participants and some 4,000 cookies.
That remains the biggest cookie swap I’ve ever been to, but in the past few years, I’ve been to a food blogger cookie swap that isn’t too shabby. I dropped the ball at this year’s swap and didn’t take a single picture, not even of the gluten-free thumbprint cookies I made using homemade Meyer lemon marmalade.
The recipe came from Karen Morgan, the owner of Blackbird Bakery whose first (and beautiful) cookbook came out a year ago. Luckily, her photographer, Knoxy, took the lovely photo at the top of this post so her recipe wouldn’t have to stand alone.
Karen says that these are her favorite holiday cookies, and though they do contain a number of out-of-the-ordinary ingredients, but another gluten-free baker in town, Kate Payne, tells me that Pamela’s Gluten-Free Bread Mix and Flour Blend, which is available at natural food stores like Wheatsville Co-op, is a pretty good substitute when you come across a gluten-free recipe that calls for a number of alternative flours.
Gluten Free Thumbprint Cookies
1/2 cup glutinous rice flour
1/2 cup tapioca flour
1/4 cup potato flour
1/4 cup cornstarch
1/4 cup sorghum flour
1 scant cup confectioner’s sugar
3 Tbsp. packed light brown sugar
1 tsp. guar gum
11 Tbsp. unsalted butter, diced
3 egg yolks
1 1/4 tsp. almond extract
1 tsp. vanilla extract
selection of preserves and marmalades for filling, like blueberry, raspberry, fig,
orange, apricot, strawberry and ginger
Preheat oven to 400 degrees and line two cookie sheets with either parchment paper or silpats.
Combine all the dry ingredients in the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix on the lowest setting to combine. Add the diced butter continue to mix on the lowest setting until the mixture looks like damp sand. Add the egg yolks and the extracts and mix on high until the dough folds in on itself.
Using a 1 1/2 retractable ice cream scoop, spoon out the dough and roll into a ball. Repeat until all your dough is transformed. Place on your cookie sheets with an inch in between them, staggering the rows for a nice even bake.
Using your index finger, press an indention into each round. Then carefully fill each indentation with a variety of fillings. Fill just to the top of the cookies.
Bake for 7-10 minutes and the cookies have just taken on a hint of color. Makes 36 cookies.
— Karen Morgan, Blackbird Bakery
Photo by Knoxy.
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By Diane
December 16, 2011 11:08 PM | Link to this
Karen Morgan generously donated gluten free desserts for the PE3 Foundations Holiday Open House and included the Thumbprint Cookies. Guests could not believe the desserts were gluten-free because they tasted so good.
Having eaten gluten free for many years, I am leery of substitutions. The results usually don’t measure up unless you’re using the ingredients called for in Karen’t recipes. Karen’s done her homework!